Update Title: 451DCED3-EE15-49F6-8310-AC57012B3680

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It was a wonderful accident of fate which brought the young composer Carl Maria von Weber together in 1811 with the great clarinet virtuoso Heinrich Baermann. Weber met Baermann in the town of Darmstadt sometime early in 1811 and having been engaged for a concert in Munich, Baermann’s hometown, he asked if Baermann would like to collaborate. Baermann, at that time the more famous of the two, agreed on condition that Weber compose a work for him to play. Weber complied with the Concertino which he finished in three days on April 3rd. Baermann performed the work on April 5 and just two days after, on April 7th the King of Bavaria, who was very impressed both with the work itself and with Baermann’s virtuosic rendition, commissioned Weber to write 2 concertos. These Weber soon competed and Baermann premiered both in the same year, the first on June 13 and the second on November 25. Weber went on to write two more works for Baermann, the Variations, op. 33 and the Quintet op. 48. The Gran Duo Concertante, composed most likely for Baermann’s colleague and rival, Johann Hermstedt completed Weber’s oeuvre for clarinet, a body of work which along with that of Mozart, Spohr, and Brahms constitutes the backbone of the clarinet repertoire.
In 1870 Heinrich Baermann’s son Carl, also a clarinetist, together with his grandson, Carl, a noted pianist with the intention to recreate the works as Heinrich played them published a revised edition of all of Weber’s works for clarinet. While Carl Baermann’s revision has formed the basis of most subsequent editions and has had a major influence on the performance tradition of these works, it has recently, often with very good reason, come under serious criticism for capriciously distorting Weber’s original text.
While I have been one of those critics, I do not believe that Baermann’s revisions are completely worthless. While the standard criticism suggests that Carl who grew up in a later Romantic age (he played in the premiere of Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde”) applied the aesthetic of that age to Weber’s music of an earlier time, I would beg to differ that he was, on the contrary, trying to preserve, perhaps in a clumsy way, the performance tradition of an earlier time. In rewriting rhythms, he was trying to recapture the kind of rubato which Weber would have expected - elongating important notes, bringing out appoggiaturas, by adding ornaments, he was trying restore what earlier would have been natural additions to the music. Baermann’s own notation, however, led to many misinterpretations.
In this edition, I have chosen to present Weber’s original text together with my own suggestions and in notes to indicate what from Baermann’s edition I find interesting and useful. Also for contrast, I have presented examples from Cyrille Rose’s edition of 1879 which formed the basis of the French Weber performance tradition and which held much more closely to Weber’s original. By presenting Weber’s wonderful Concertino in this way, I hope to inspire those learning the piece to develop their own personal, yet informed interpretation. I am sure that this would be what Weber would have desired.

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