Mozart's Clarinet

Historical clarinettist Nicola Boud, cellist Simon Cobcroft and early keyboardist Erin Helyard explore the brave new sounds of eighteenth-century Vienna.

Travel back in time with these questing early music specialists to discover Mozart and Beethoven as if for the first time.

Vienna, 1785. Johann Friedrich Schink is blown away by a new work featuring the new-fangled clarinet and basset horn. ‘Oh, what a glorious effect it made – glorious and great, excellent and sublime!’ he writes of Mozart’s Serenade 'Gran Partita’.

Eighteenth-century Vienna was abuzz with musical inventions. From the mellifluous clarinet (and its dark, idiosyncratic cousin, the basset horn) to the extended range and dynamics of the fortepiano, to the resonance of stringed instruments, the palette of sonic possibilities was expanding year on year. Both well-established composers like Mozart, and up-and-coming individuals, such as a young musician called Ludwig van Beethoven, were inspired by the possibilities.

So too are performers and early music scholars Nicola Boud, Simon Cobcroft and Erin Helyard, who bring their infectious enthusiasm for innovation, 18th-century style, to the much-loved chamber music of these trailblazing characters.