This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: In classical music, there are career soloists who are known for their prowess, their virtuosity, their command of their instrument.
And then there are members of the orchestra. Musicians who work literally in concert with others. They are the team players, they set the standards for a symphony — its depth and its reach.
To the outside observer, these unsung heroes of concert halls may not individually capture the attention of an audience. And yet their performance, their skill, their depth of knowledge, individually as well as collectively, matters most.
This weekend, that will happen as Scott Andrews, principal clarinet for the St. Louis Symphony, will perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Concerto in A major, K. 622.
The lively performances promise to be interesting, as Mozart is one of those composers who challenges his musicians’ both in skill and creativity, Andrews said in a recent interview.
“The brilliance of his music really is in its simplicity,” the 42-year-old musician said. “He wrote this amazing concerto that has a clean, pure aesthetic.”
This is not a piece filled with contrapuntal elements. Rather Mozart has thinned out the textures of the piece so that the purity of the tone and the beauty of the notes are precise, Andrews said.
The result is conceivably the most challenging piece of music for the clarinet. “It requires incredible technical accuracy,” Andrews said.
Mozart’s concerto insists on a pitch-perfect rendering, he continued, the sort that is best achieved through a fine ear and a delicate touch.
The piece was first performed in Prague in 1791 by Mozart’s friend, Anton Stadler, who himself was a formidable musician.
Therein lies the difficulty with Mozart, Andrews said. He was an extraordinary musician, as was his friend.
“Mozart was writing things that he could play but that would be very difficult for most human beings,” Andrew said. “This is arguably the most difficult music for a clarinet player.”
Stadler was the greatest clarinet player of his day, certainly one of the most outstanding in history, Andrews said. He believes that Stadler may have been the only man then who was capable of performing that piece of music.
“The clarinet was just a young instrument at that time,” he said. “This concerto pushed the development of the instrument further along – more than any other piece written.”
Despite its reputation as demanding, almost every clarinet student studies it at some point in his career.
Andrews first encountered the concerto in school in Virginia Beach, Va., where he was raised. When he took on this quintessential classic, he worked hard to get it right because he wanted to please one of his teachers.
“My teacher was this really inspiring guy,” Andrews said. To this day, Andrews keeps up with Edward Knackal, who is 63.
And while Knackal was and is a major influence in his life, Andrews said his mother and grandfather also played important roles in his development.
“I began playing the clarinet by default,” he said.
He started on the piano at age 5 and moved on to the violin and the viola. When he got to sixth grade, he became interested in the clarinet. His mother told him his grandfather had a clarinet stowed away at his house. Decades earlier, his uncles had played it. His parents had paid for enough instruments, so the clarinet became his.
That was the game changer for him musically. He attended the New England Conservatory in Boston, and his first orchestra post was as a clarinet player for the Boston Symphony and the Boston Pops before coming to St. Louis as principal chair.
This weekend provides a new challenge for Andrews, as he not only will perform as a soloist, but will also work with conductor Bernard Labadie. He has met Labadie before as a member of the orchestra, but this is the first time as a soloist.
And what better choice of music for collaboration than the Mozart concerto.
Andrews likened the experience to a conversation.
“You know the subject,” he said, “but you don’t know what direction the conversation will take, and on any given night, it can be different.”
That is what makes this solo opportunity fun and interesting for him. Andrews said he chose not to pursue a career as a soloist, preferring instead to be a part of something larger, something shared. That is the beauty of working as a member of an orchestra.
Still, the chance to perform such a legendary piece of music excites him. “This is an opportunity to experiment in the phrases and tempo and articulation,” Andrews said. “There are just tons of opportunities for embellishment — there is a sort of call and response concept that can only happen in live performance.”