Clarinet Quartet in Bb Major K317d(378)

By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

5 stars for the music, 1 star for the edition. This edition is marginally less lamentable than the Voxman/Musica Rara edition, but they share the same maddening drawbacks: page turns that don't work, copious misprints and intrusive, romantic editorial alterations of dynamics, articulation, even melody. Expect to spend...

many hours fixing wrong notes, arranging the parts so page turns work and removing the countless inauthentic hairpin swells. That said, the music is so wonderful, it is worth your time!

Thanks are due to Dieter Klöcker for making these arrangements available. These versions of Mozart's music from Mozart's time add considerably to the chamber repertoire which Mozart left for clarinettists; they're wonderful music and deserve to be more widely heard. This is the only edition of...

these arrangements still widely obtainable. All the more unfortunate, then, that the edition has been prepared according to an editorial practice that was old-fashioned even when it was printed in 1985 and today is hardly acceptable. Players nowadays rightly demand to know what the composer (or in this case the original arranger) wrote; here it is impossible to distinguish Klöcker's copious editorial additions from the original material. Hopefully another edition of these works, prepared according to a more responsible editorial practice, will come along soon. Until then those who wish to play these works in this form unfortunately have to make do with this edition.