The Clarinet Quintet by Osmo Vänskä.

  • Clarinet in A
  • Violin I
  • Violin II
  • Viola
  • Cello

Full Score available both in C and transposed.

First performed on 6 November 2024 at The Curtis Institute of Music with Erin Keefe, Emmalena Huning, Annis Ma, Hun Choi and Osmo Vänskä.

Programme Note

I have long wanted to write a clarinet quintet because I have been in love with the clarinet my entire life. I started playing the instrument when I was a little over ten years old, very convinced that it suited my abilities much better than the small violin I had been squeaking away at the previous year. I really liked classical music, and the clarinet soon gave me an idea and a dream for the future: to learn to play it well enough to get a position as a clarinetist in a professional orchestra. I realized that it would not be easy and that it would require a lot of hard work, but my enthusiasm for it remained high. When, in 1971 at the age of 18, I won the principal clarinet audition for the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, my dream came true!

I learned so much playing the orchestra, and performing chamber music in addition, offered a slightly different opportunity to make music. Over the years, the clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms have often been on my music stand, and I am grateful and happy for the many opportunities I have had to perform these masterpieces. Having been inspired by them, I decided to continue the quintet tradition by composing a work for the same instruments as the giants Mozart and Brahms did: the A-clarinet and string quartet. (Yes, we know Mozart's instrument may have been a basset clarinet, but still in the key of A.)

The music of my quintet is largely based on my personal experiences and memories. There is nostalgia, enthusiasm, frustration, joy and melancholy. This music does not so much look to the future, but rather to the past, to the life already lived, and that is why it sounds more traditional than modern. 

The clarinet is an incredibly versatile instrument, and its sound is natural in any style. For the quintet I wanted it to contain not only so-called “classical music,” but also two other typical examples of the clarinet (affectionately nick-named the “licorice stick” by some!) tradition: klezmer and jazz. The latter is a tribute to the great Benny Goodman, whose own solo from the song “Sing, Sing, Sing” is written at the end of the third movement.

The work has five parts, played attacca so that there is only a breath-long pause between the sections.

I would like to thank my son Perttu Vänskä very much for his advice, ideas and help in completing this piece.

The quintet is dedicated to my mentors and teachers Sven Lavela and Karl Leister.

© Osmo Vänskä