Quartet in E flat major, Op.8, No.2

Carl Stamitz’s six Quartets, Op.8, were first published in Paris in 1773 with parts for clarinet, violin, viola and bassoon. The origins of the present version for wind quartet are obscure - today’s performance is based on an edition by Günther Weigelt published in Leipzig in 1937 - but it is highly unlikely that the arrangement is by Stamitz himself. As a member of the Mannheim court orchestra, where clarinets had a regular place in the ensemble long before they were accepted in most other major centres, and as an employee of the Elector Carl Theodor, who was himself a clarinettist, Stamitz was an early and enthusiastic champion of the clarinet. He wrote no fewer than ten concertos for the clarinet and much chamber music making a special feature of the instrument - including the six Quartets, Op.8. He would surely never have cast the clarinet in the kind of part it occupies in this arrangement where, clearly, the starring role has been transferred to oboe and the string parts rewritten for clarinet and horn. The bassoon part presumably remains the same.

While most of the melodic and decorative interest in the first movement is carried by the oboe, the salient phrase in the main theme is actually introduced by horn and recalled in the recapitulation by the otherwise not very conspicuous clarinet. The bassoon rises to prominence in a melodious duet with the oboe in the outer sections of the Andante, but where the oboe is silent it is the horn or the clarinet that shifts into the foreground. By keeping the rondo theme more or less to itself, the oboe also dominates the last movement, although the clarinet assumes the thematic responsibility in the first episode and although the horn is awarded a brief cadenza just before it re-introduces the rondo theme for the last time.