Sacha Gibbs-McPhee
Clarinettist
Mozart's Heartwarming Quintet
Just like Noosa Chamber Music, the Tonkünstler-Societät of Vienna (a charity for the widows and orphans of deceased musicians) gathered a few times each year as friends, to warm hearts with music. One could hardly exclude Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from a Viennese gathering in 1789, so they asked him to contribute a work which was given its premiere by Anton Stadler.
Mozart was an admirer of Stadler, once saying of his playing: "I have never heard the like of what you contrived with your instrument... your instrument has so soft and lovely a tone that no one can resist it." If not for this musical friendship, the clarinet may be as obscure to us today as the ophicleide or cimbasso are.
With four friends at my side, I will perform this work for the first time in my career, in a program also featuring a whimsical argument by Beethoven's pal, Anton Reicha, a stormy voyage giving way to serenity to mark the end of a Great War by English composer Herbert Howells, and a small Spanish gift from my friend, Joseph Myers.