Louis Spohr wrote four clarinet concertos as a result of his professional acquaintance with clarinetist Johann Simon Hermstedt. The first shows that Spohr’s often conservative approach to composition didn’t keep him from writing a concerto with some serious surprises. It’s a difficult work, especially for the clarinet of his time, which had fewer keys than the modern instrument.

The difficulty is partly due to Spohr’s unfamiliarity with what is easy and what is harder on a clarinet. His preface to the printed music reveals that this concerto led directly to improvements in the instrument’s design:

Since at that time my knowledge of the clarinet was pretty nearly limited to its range and I therefore paid little attention to the weaknesses of the instrument, I have thus written much that will appear to the clarinetist at first sight as impracticable. Herr Hermstedt, however, far from asking me to alter these passages, sought rather to perfect his instrument and soon by continuous industry arrived at the point where his clarinet had no faulty, dull, uncertain tones.

The first movement starts with a slow introduction, which is rare for a classical concerto. It contains the seeds of the music for the movement, a practice Spohr often used. The Allegro that follows, in C minor, sounds as if it’s going to be the normal orchestral tutti before the soloist’s entry, but the clarinet is impatient and jumps in after just a few measures. The first and second themes are both based on the introduction. The clarinet part is agitated and contains lots of fast notes, including grace notes between sixteenth notes. The performer has to hit the difficult double high C.

The slow movement is a miniature in every way. It’s just three minutes long, and only the clarinet, the violins, and the cellos play. The structure is a simple ABA form, but the coda is nearly a third of the movement and briefly disrupts the calm mood before settling down.

The rondo finale starts off in the cheerful minor, with some stormy passages providing contrast. But at the end, something astonishing happens. The music slows down and softens to pianissimo, ending on a quiet minor chord. Concertos are supposed to end in a blaze of glory for the soloist! There’s just one other concerto I know of in the classical literature that ends softly, slowly, and in the minor: Poulenc’s Concert Champêtre. Several post-1900 concertos, such as the Berg violin concerto, end softly and slowly, but they aren’t really in a key. The Poulenc counts because it ends on a minor chord. Spohr’s ending works because the “cheerful minor” feels as if it’s been holding off something that ultimately has to be admitted. The falling off at the end is brief and effective, but it isn’t optimal for getting loud applause.

This article is available under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. That says you can use it however you want — for instance, in program notes — provided you give me credit by name and aren’t making money off it. (If you are making money, that’s fine, but I expect a cut. Talk to me.)