Mozart's Clarinet Concerto

Vasily Petrenko
Conductor

Vasily Petrenko is Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he took on in 2021, becoming Conductor Laureate of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra following his hugely acclaimed 15-year tenure as their Chief Conductor from 2006–2021. He is the Associate Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and has also served as Chief Conductor of the European Union Youth Orchestra (2015–2024), Chief Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra (2013–2020) and Principal Conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (2009–2013). He stood down as Artistic Director of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’ in 2022, having been their Principal Guest Conductor from 2016 and Artistic Director from 2020.

Petrenko has worked with many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome), St Petersburg Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Czech Philharmonic and NHK Symphony Orchestras, and in North America has led the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and the San Francisco, Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. He has appeared at the Edinburgh Festival, Grafenegg Festival, and made frequent appearances at the BBC Proms. Equally at home in the opera house, and with over thirty operas in his repertoire, Vasily Petrenko has conducted widely on the operatic stage, including at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Opéra National de Paris, Opernhaus Zürich, the Bayerische Staatsoper, and the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

Recent highlights have included wide-ranging touring with the Royal Philharmonic, across major European capitals, the US and China. The 23/24 season included a debut appearance with the NDR-Elphilharmonie in Hamburg and returns to Hong Kong, Seoul, Israel and Dresden Philharmonics, the Dallas and Pittsburgh Symphonies and the Filarmonica della Scala in Milan and Dresden Symphony Orchestras.

Highlights of the 24/25 season include his debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a new production of Boris Godunov at the Dutch National Opera, returns to the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Sydney, Montreal, Singapore, Berlin Radio and Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestras, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC, and touring to Germany and major European summer festivals with the Royal Philharmonic.

Vasily Petrenko has established a strongly defined profile as a recording artist. Amongst a wide discography, his Shostakovich, Rachmaninov and Elgar symphony cycles with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra have garnered worldwide acclaim. With the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, he has released cycles of Scriabin’s symphonies and Strauss’ tone poems, and an ongoing series of the symphonies of Prokofiev and Myaskovsky.

Born in 1976, Petrenko was educated at the St Petersburg Capella Boys Music School (Russia’s oldest music school) and the St Petersburg Conservatoire, where he participated in masterclasses with such luminary figures as Ilya Musin, Mariss Jansons and Yuri Temirkanov, and began his career as Resident Conductor (1994–1997) of St Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theatre. In September 2017, Vasily Petrenko was honoured with the Artist of the Year award at the prestigious annual Gramophone Awards, one decade on from receiving their Young Artist of the Year award in October 2007. In 2010, he won the Male Artist of the Year at the Classical BRIT Awards. He is only the second person to have been awarded Honorary Doctorates by both the University of Liverpool and Liverpool Hope University (in 2009), and an Honorary Fellowship of the Liverpool John Moores University (in 2012), awards which recognise the immense impact he has had on the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the city’s cultural scene. In 2024, Vasily also launched a new academy for young conductors, co-organised by the Primavera Foundation Armenia and the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra.

Som Howie
Clarinet

Som Howie is WASO’s Associate Principal Clarinet.

Som joined WASO in 2024. Before joining WASO, Som held the position of solo Clarinettist with the Danish Chamber Players. Originally from Sydney, Som began playing clarinet at the age of 11 with Mark Walton until he started his Bachelor’s Degree at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. During his time in Sydney, Som studied with Cathy McCorkill and Sue Newsome, and completed his final years with Frank Celata. After moving to Europe in 2014, Som completed a Master’s Degree with Hermann Stefánsson and Andreas Sundén at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.

As an orchestral musician, Som has performed with major orchestras around the world including: Copenhagen Philharmonic, The Swedish Radio Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Swedish Opera, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Australian Opera and Ballet, and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Som has toured to Edinburgh with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and to India with the Australian World Orchestra.

In 2016, Som was selected for the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra Academy. Previous to this, Som has held academy positions with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Future Firsts Scheme. Som has attended masterclasses with Sabine Meyer, Andrew Marriner, Martin Fröst, and Yehuda Gilad.

As a soloist, Som has performed concertos with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Willoughby Symphony Orchestra, and the Southbank Sinfonia in the UK. In 2016, he recorded English composer Geoffrey Hanson’s Clarinet Concerto with the London Mozart Players.

In 2015, Som was a prize winner in the Royal Overseas League (ROSL) Annual Competition, and, as a result, toured with his trio (the Dolmen Ensemble) on behalf of ROSL to Malta, Scotland, and New Zealand. In the same year, Som recorded his first solo album with his father, David Howie. The album is titled Premiere Rhapsody and was produced by UK-based record label, Cala Records. Som is a Buffet Crampon Artist and a scholar of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust.

In his spare time, Som loves spending time at the beach, playing cricket and soccer, and looking for all the best coffee spots.

William Walton
(1902–1983)

Spitfire Prelude and Fugue

Prelude
Fugue

William Walton’s Spitfire Prelude and Fugue sounds as majestic as its namesake. The Spitfire was a fighter aircraft that featured in the 1942 film, The First of the Few. Walton composed the music for this cinematic adventure about the aircraft designer R.J. Mitchell, and this concert arrangement stems from the wartime score. Walton conducted its premiere in 1943 at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall.

A prelude is an introduction, so the start of this music was set against the black and white title sequence of the film. The proudly blazing brass, rousing strings, and simple rhythms all contribute to the work’s nationalistic flare. The march-like tempo and crashing percussion give it a typical military feel, but we can also feel a hint of warmth and sentimentality. After all, the story is one of respect and pride for the efforts of those who worked to protect Britain against the Nazis during World War II.

Then the music shifts, and you will hear a rush of notes that scurry between different sections of the orchestra. If you think it sounds a little bit Baroque, you aren’t mistaken because it takes the form of a fugue, a compositional technique that Bach himself employed. It introduces one musical idea, then another voice answers. In Spitfire, the fugue drives the narrative of the film: the aircraft is designed and built, layer by layer, in a clever fusion of story and sound.

The composition reaches a predictably triumphant conclusion, epic enough to raise your spirits even without the accompanying vision.

© Stephanie Eslake, 2025

First performance: 2 January 1943, Liverpool, composer conducting.
First WASO performance: This is the first performance by WASO.
Instrumentation: two each of flutes (one doubling piccolo), oboes, clarinets and bassoons; four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba; timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)

Clarinet Concerto in A, K622
Allegro
Adagio
Rondo (Allegro)

The clarinet was an exotic instrument in Mozart’s day. Writing to his father from the German city of Mannheim, 22-yearold Mozart exclaimed: ‘If only we had clarinets! You cannot imagine the glorious effect of a symphony with flutes, oboes and clarinets.’ The famed Mannheim orchestra had no less than two clarinets; the Salzburg orchestra – in which Mozart father and son played – had none. Years later, when Mozart was making a career for himself in Vienna, he became acquainted with the Stadler brothers, Anton and Johann, skilled clarinettists who performed in various ensembles in the imperial capital. It was for Anton, the elder of the two, that Mozart composed the Clarinet Concerto, in September- October 1791.

Among the features of the clarinet that must have appealed to Mozart are the strongly differentiated colours of the instrument’s various registers. The clarinet’s tonal variety is astonishing. The low register is dark and resonant, the middle is warm and melodious, and the top is clear and bright. No other woodwind instrument has such a broad range of sounds from top to bottom.

Curiously, no other woodwind instrument has such a powerful ‘break’ in the middle of its range. Like the break in the singing voice, the clarinet break is something that players have to work hard at controlling. Playing above or below the break poses no special challenges but travelling across it can be hazardous.

And this is probably another reason why Mozart so loved the clarinet: its strong affinity with the human voice. The clarinet has a chest voice, a head voice and a break in-between. It is powered by air passing from the lungs through the lips. It sings not with words but with pure open sounds. And the smooth carriage from one sound to another – as smooth as a singer gliding from one note to the next – is one of the instrument’s specialties. ‘Never should I have thought that a clarinet could be capable of imitating a human voice so deceptively as it was imitated by you,’ wrote a critic of Anton Stadler’s playing.

Judging from the opening movement of the Clarinet Concerto, Allegro, Mozart relished putting Stadler through his paces, while simultaneously exhibiting the instrument’s kaleidoscopic range. Of particular note is Mozart’s tendency to commence a phrase in one register (either high or low) and abruptly jump to another for its continuation. There’s something marvellous about the apparent ease with which the clarinet is able to carry this out.

The second movement, Adagio, is a soulful aria for clarinet and orchestra. What is remarkable is the way in which Mozart creates such beautiful, song-like melodies from such plain and simple means: the rising notes of a chord and the falling notes of a scale. Here, the building blocks of music open a portal to the sublime. By contrast, the jaunty finale exhibits the clarinet’s playful side. As before, the music leaps between registers. Mozart also has the soloist perform dazzling acrobatics, proving just how agile this novel instrument is.

Robert Gibson © 2019

First performance: 16 October 1791, Prague National Theatre. Anton Stadler, soloist.
First WASO performance: 20 September 1962. John Farnsworth Hall, conductor; Allan Rule, soloist.
Most recent WASO performance: 3-4 May 2019. Mark Wigglesworth, conductor; Andreas Ottensamer, soloist.
Instrumentation: solo clarinet, two flutes, two bassoons, two horns, strings.

Ralph Vaughan Williams
(1872–1958)

Symphony No.5 in D Major

Preludio (Moderato)
Scherzo (Presto)
Romanza (Lento)
Passacaglia (Moderato)

Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony was premiered in June 1943, six months after Churchill’s famous declaration of the ‘end of the beginning’ of the Second World War. Conflict and violence had characterised the composer’s Fourth Symphony (1935), but in this Symphony, Vaughan Williams chose to create a work of sublime tranquility and moral reassurance.

Much of the material derives from music for a projected opera of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. It may be true that, as the composer got on in years, he worried that this operatic project would not see the light of day, so he used some of its elements in the new Symphony. But that is a rather prosaic way of considering this exultant and musically unified work. It’s better to think of the Fifth as imbued with the character and aesthetic of The Pilgrim’s Progress, so that it represents, in Wilfrid Mellers’ words, a ‘musical quintessence’ of the book.

The Pilgrim’s Progress was a story that worked powerfully on Vaughan Williams’ imagination. Above all, the book provided him with a vision of the heavenly Ideal. A ‘cheerful agnostic’, he understood the promise of heaven and its importance for individuals and for society. Perhaps this heaven can be read more rightly as ‘utopia’, its defining character: peacefulness. Musicologist Frank Howes observed that in this Symphony, Vaughan Williams not only reflected upon a world after the War, in which there is an ‘absence of armed conflict’, but aspired to essay a higher condition of ‘peace, ultimate and fundamental’. This peaceful state is attained only after a considerable quest.

While thankfully the Symphony doesn’t put us through a litany of trials such as ‘Pilgrim’ goes through, we nevertheless gain a sense of a life’s journey through different emotional experiences. The Symphony adopts a relatively formal Classical symphonic structure, so we should avoid ascribing to it an excessively programmatic or narrative reading. However, some of the Symphony’s music appears also in Vaughan Williams’ other versions of the Pilgrim’s Progress story, in particular a radio play from 1942 and an opera (more like a dramatic oratorio) performed in 1951. Some observation of the links between the Symphony and other Pilgrim’s Progress material can inform an appreciation of the music.

The Symphony opens with an evocation of blissful, unsullied nature. Human or perhaps sinister influence intrudes, with thematic material adapted from music associated with Beelzebub in the opera. The sinister presence comes forward more in the second movement, where the scurrying, ethereal music is like that with which Vaughan Williams describes Pilgrim’s fight with ‘hobgoblins’ in the opera.

The third movement is entitled Romanza, but even here the idyllic mood (material similar to the opera’s Act I, Scene ii, ‘The House Beautiful’) is contrasted with music of agitation (Act I, Scene i’s ‘Save me, Lord! My burden is greater than I can bear’). The final movement is dominated by a glorious passacaglia on a hymnlike theme, rising to a great D major climax. But, this is not the Symphony’s end. An epilogue shares material with the scene in the opera where Pilgrim passes over the River of Death, entering humbly but triumphantly into Paradise.

These instances illustrate not so much a narrative underpinning, but a philosophical one for the Symphony: the pursuit of goodness and justice faces continual challenge from darker forces. In seeing evidence of Pilgrim’s Progress in the work, we understand its character as one of benediction. In the contest of good and evil, Vaughan Williams offers us gentle encouragement to maintain our resolve and persistence towards attaining the final goal – peace.

The music’s structure reflects this philosophical purpose. The Classical structure is subjected to such richly imaginative and intuitive remodeling we can barely recognise it. For the most part, the Symphony proceeds by means of contrasts rather than traditional ‘argument’ or ‘conflict’. Artful combination of ancient modality and pentatonic harmony with contemporary tonality creates an extended, harmonically luscious soundworld. It’s only in the final movement that D major unequivocally asserts itself, its triumph so emphatic that Mellers describes the key as representing ‘human fulfilment’.

The feeling at the end of this work is one of absolution, from which, it is to be hoped, we gain the resolve to continue our pursuit of the just cause or to seek out the path of goodness.

James Koehne © 2004

First performance: 24 June 1943, London, composer conducting.
First WASO performance: 23-24 May 1952; Rudolf Pekárek, conductor.
Most recent WASO performance: 13-14 October 2017; Douglas Boyd, conductor.
Instrumentation: two flutes, oboe, cor anglais, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings.