During June, July and August of the year that just ended (2021), I had the pleasure of undertaking a musical/teaching activity that gave me great pleasure and was enriching for everyone. Together with four clarinet students from different provinces of Argentina, who signed up for the activity organized by the Escuela Argentina de Clarinete, we faced the remote preparation and video recording, each one from home, of a piece for clarinet quartet.
The work I chose was W. A. Mozart's Minuet K. 458, which was originally written for strings, and is the 2nd. movement of the String Quartet in B flat major No. 17 K. 458, also known as "The Hunt", which Mozart wrote in 1784.
Its duration is about 4 minutes, and, like any work by Mozart, its interpretation is extremely difficult due to its transparency and depth of musical ideas. Playing Mozart always represents a great challenge, to achieve a "correct" interpretation but at the same time very expressive and with character... Mozart should never sound boring!
The clarinettists who worked with me were: Julieta Zárate (from Provincia de San Juan), Paula Caputo (Buenos Aires), Analía Bernasconi (Santa Fe) y Víctor Hugo Luna (Córdoba). In this blog entry I want to share two videos: on the one hand, the final recording of the Minué by the students, and then the Zoom meeting where we all participated and I was able to explain in detail how the work went from start to finish. If you want to see the original score for strings, here it is: