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“The Clarinet & the Basset Horn”

This concert programme highlights two closely related instruments of the clarinet family — the clarinet and the basset horn — within a music-historical context spanning from the late 18th to the early 19th century. It reveals stylistic developments as well as differing compositional approaches to the tonal world of these instruments.

The basset horn, a lower and darker-sounding member of the clarinet family, achieved wider recognition primarily through Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, but was also employed as a solo instrument by contemporaries such as Heinrich Backofen (1768–1830). Today, Backofen’s name is virtually forgotten, yet his works demonstrate the diversity of compositional treatment that this instrument enjoyed around 1800. Thanks to its special tuning (usually in F), the basset horn offers greater tonal depth and a distinctive expressive dimension — qualities that are seldom heard in today’s concert practice.

Carl Maria von Weber, a leading figure of…