Mozart Clarinet Quintet, K581, and Haydn Op. 20/1

Most of the time, I’m the instigator of a session of chamber music.  I like to think that’s because I have a gift for getting people to play chamber music who otherwise wouldn’t, not that I have to bribe people with cookies from the local bakery in order to get them to play with me. :-)  But this evening, I was invited to play at the house of a violist, which meant that I got to play violin.

It’s funny:  I would have thought the main difficulty switching back and forth between violin and viola would be the difference in the spread of the left hand.  But that hasn’t been much of a problem; I think because string players are used to different spreads as we change positions.  No, the main problem is that the bow is in a completely different place: I find when I play the violin that my bow slides a significant way up the fingerboard, heading for the proper location if I’d had a viola in my hand.

We had a clarinetist for the first half of the evening, which was a treat: I’d never met him before, but he was a delightful man and a good player.  I don’t have to say too much about the Mozart Clarinet Quintet: it’s pretty famous, as chamber music goes.  It was used in the last episode of the television show M*A*S*H, for example.

I did okay as second violin on the Mozart, except that I’ve been having this problem where soft, slow notes on the G string sound pretty horrendous, and the slow movement of the Mozart is pretty much nothing but soft slow notes on the G string.  Consultation with Facebook friends confirmed my suspicion: I’ve been over-rosining my bow.  Fortunately, I’m going to get it rehaired soon, so that problem will go away.  And I promise to be sparing with the rosin in future!

One of the things I find sad is how little chamber music there is to play with winds.  Among the great classical and romantic composers, only a few pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms.  And string players tend not to like to play music by lesser composers, in my experience.  An unfortunate source of tension in the hobby.

We closed out the evening with a Haydn Quartet: the host likes to play through all of them in order, and this evening was Op. 20, No. 1.  I’d played this one before, last spring, but on viola: it was a different experience on second violin.  But I felt quite comfortable.  One of the things that’s really improved in my playing over the past few months is my use of second position; I now feel secure with it, both on violin and viola.

It’s funny: even though I’d played this piece only once before, I remembered the trap that Haydn sets, with the first violin having a quarter note pickup whenever the theme comes back in the last movement, and the second violin, an eighth note.  I didn’t do quite so well in supporting the first violin in the syncopated passages.  I think the problem was confusion between the cellist and me about who should be in charge of the downbeats, and the tiny amount of hesitation was enough to throw the first violin off.  But it was a successful reading, anyhow!