Programme
Concerto for Bassoon in B flat major, K191*
Concerto for Oboe in C major, K314**
Concerto for Clarinet in A major, K622***


Performers
*Jean-Claude Montac (bassoon)
**Yves Pourcel (oboe)
***Michel Arrignon (clarinet)

Paris Opera Orchestra
Georges Prêtre (conductor)

In musical terms, Mozart (1756-91) was more a refiner rather than a pioneer - but in one important way he broke radical new ground for composers. Until then they were humble dogsbodies: JS Bach was a troublesome employee of Leipzig, Haydn a faithful servant of Prince Esterhazy. Many after him still depended on private patrons - Beethoven on Lichnowsky, Tchaikovsky on Mrs von Meck.

But Mozart was the first musical freelancer, composing whatever the market wanted. Today he'd be writing legendary film scores, perhaps; in 1780s Vienna he could scratch a living by turning out chamber pieces, concertos, symphonies and operas. With copyright a free-for-all, making money from the marketplace meant writing for subscription concerts or, for the big money, the opera stage. (Mozart's later piano concertos were break-even affairs, premiered in a coffee shop in Vienna town centre.)

The Bassoon Concerto was written in June 1774 when Mozart was 18, possibly at the behest of one of his rich Salzburg patrons. It's a charming concerto in the classical style in three movements, and perhaps notable to modern ears is how Mozart's wonderful feel for wind instruments brings out the instrument's lyrical, rich and velvety sides, rather than treating it as the 'clown' or 'grumpy old man of the orchestra'.

Every freelancer will be familiar with Mozart's eternal problems of having to fulfill unrewarding bread-and-butter commissions. In 1777, aged 21 and already feted across Europe, he received a commission to compose three easy flute concertos for an amateur Dutch flautist called Ferdinand de Jean. He completed the lovely G minor K313, and an Andante in C major K315, which may have been a substitute second movement for this concerto, plus two quartets for flute and strings. But for the second concerto, K314, Mozart cheated. Either under pressure from time, or because of his alleged hatred of the flute, he transposed this Oboe Concerto in C major, written earlier that year, to D major - which explains why you'll see K314 on CD in either guise. Apparently de Jean noticed, and did not pay the full fee! The music is jovial, uncomplicated and fresh in style, so surely de Jean got his money's worth, whatever the small print of the contract.

The wonderful Clarinet Concerto comes from 1791, Mozart's last year of life. Written when his beloved wife Costanze was away convalescing from a serious illness, it's tempting to think that the achingly beautiful slow movement is an expression of profound, backward-looking sadness of someone conscious of both his own and his wife's mortality. However, it's not a theory that stands up to scrutiny - his letters to Constanze show he was in good spirits at the time, and he was still an active young man of 35, yet to contract the kidney disease that would kill him a few months later. Perhaps the bubbling optimism of the first movement is more of a key to Mozart's mood at the time; whatever the case, the concerto is one of the most popular in the classical repertoire, though a 1791 performance would sound rather different to our ears. For a start, the instrument Mozart wrote for had a lower range, so today's performers have to re-arrange the low passages; and there were several technical differences between clarinets then and now, mainly in the keywork, but perhaps the most surprising to today's players being that the reed was played on top, not the bottom, of the mouthpiece, giving a greater range of tone colours but with more danger of wrong notes.