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Adlais 146: Quintet for Flute, Harp & String Trio After the Concerto KV 299

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Quintet for Flute, Harp & String Trio
After the Concerto KV 299

WA Mozart
Arranged Derek Smith

Duration c. 22' 10" minutes
For Flute, Harp and String Trio
Catalogue No. Adlais 146
ISMN 979-0-57032-130-8 (score & set of parts)
Edition Date 2008
Score Format A4 Stapled, score and set of parts
Suitable for Advanced Chamber Group
 
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Further Information

NEWS & REVIEWS

Annual Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Memorial Concert. Kjarvalsstadir, Reykjavik, Iceland 27 January 2009

Derek Smith's Quintet for Flute, Harp & String Trio was performed at this annual concert which marks the birth of WA Mozart on 27 January 1756. The programme also included Divertimento KV 563 for violin, viola and cello, Quartet for flute and strings in C-major KV Anh. 171 (285b). The musicians were Laufey Sigurðardóttir, Þórunn Ósk Marinósdóttir, Sigurður Bjarki Gunnarsson, Martial Nardeau and Elísabet Waage. Clarinet player Einar Jóhannesson talked about the composer and the pieces.

“…The best piece was the Quintet in C major which was a world premiere of an arrangment by Derek Smith of the Concerto for flute, harp and orchestra.  The arrangement uses 3 string players as an orchestra.  They succeded in forming a suiteble frame around Elísabet’s Waage harp playing that was rich of feeling.  Here the harp was not drowned as tends to happen with a whole orchestra. No, Derek Smith’s arrangement was both tasteful and inventive, even better than the original!......”

Jónas Sen writing in the Icelandic newspaper Morgunbladid.

'Carolingua', Derek Smith's composition for String Quartet and Four Soprano Voices, was awarded first prize in the Henschel String Quartet / BBC Music Magazine's Henschel String Quartet competition 2009. It is to be featured on a CD of Christmas music with the Henschel Quartet and the famous Toelzer Knabenchor.

Mozart’s Flute & Harp “Quintet”

Composed in Paris in April 1778, Mozart's Concerto was written for Adrien-Louis de Bonnières, Duc de Guines, and his harpist daughter, Marie-Louise Philippine, who was Mozart's composition student. It features the then new multi-keyed flute with extended register down to D flat and C natural, exploited gleefully in the first movement, the bottom ‘C’ also appearing in the other movements. Though popular with audiences, the work is expensive to put on and in some resonant acoustics there can be balance problems. The nineteenth-century chamber literature contains a number of attractive French works for flute, harp & solo strings. This gave me the idea of arranging the Concerto as a companion piece for intimate performance.

In order to realise a true chamber music texture, I felt it was not enough merely to score the orchestra part for string trio; neither would this have been musically or technically effective. Conversion from a display to an ensemble piece led to my omitting the usual cadenzas (not by Mozart, in any case) and their orchestral harbingers. Otherwise I was able to preserve almost all of Mozart’s solo writing while introducing flute and harp elsewhere where needed as ripieno instruments. To avoid textural fatigue, players and listeners are given relief in this quintet version through rescoring a few flute phrases for strings.

D.A.S

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Sample of the music