Mozart Clarinet Concerto: Transcribed For Cello

This magnificent concerto was one of Mozart‘s last works, completed just a few weeks before his death in 1791. If we transpose the clarinet part down an octave it actually lies very well for the cello. Played on the original basset clarinet for which it was written, the lowest clarinet note (transposed down an octave) corresponds to the cello’s open C-string and the highest note to a D, a fourth above our mid-string harmonic on the A-string.

This is more of a “fun” transcription than a serious addition to the cello’s concerto repertoire. While the register doesn’t present us with any particular problems, the idiomatic clarinet writing does. The fast-flowing scales and arpeggios for which the clarinet is so ideally suited are considerably more difficult on the cello. This makes the piece quite technically challenging for cellists.

Normally, the cellofun “Easier Versions” are easier principally because the high-register passages are taken down an octave. For the first and third movements of this concerto, no “Easier Version” is offered because the problems do not come from the register but rather from the difficulty of mimicking the clarinet’s speed and agility. The only way to make these movements easier (apart from playing them slower) would be to remove/change notes but this would be a massacre of unacceptable dimensions and has not been done.

But the technical difficulty of this work makes it very useful as a general workout, requiring (and thus developing) enormous agility and mobility (= virtuosity) in both hands. Even if we play it mostly as a “study”, rarely is an intense technical workout so musically satisfying.

FIRST MOVEMENT: Allegro

1. Edited Performance Version
2.        Clean Performance Version
3.        Literal Urtext Transcription
4.        Engraving Files (XML)