Roeland Hendrikx, a renowned Belgian clarinetist, enthralled the audience earlier this month at the Thailand Cultural Centre with an engaging performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto In A Major. The concerto was the last instrumental composition Mozart wrote just before his death for Anton Sadler, one of the most accomplished clarinet and the basset horn players in the 18th century.
As evident in the surviving fragments of a manuscript, the piece was initially sketched for the basset horn in G major but was later adapted for the basset clarinet. The basset clarinet is, in fact, a rare and expensive instrument even during Mozart’s time. It is larger than a standard clarinet and can be played to as low as C as opposed to a standard clarinet’s E or E-flat. Hendrikx’s use of a custom-made basset clarinet for the work last Saturday was therefore a rare treat for the audience.
