The journey I took whilst composing my piece for clarinet and orchestra took me away from the title of a concerto. The movements and their character are of a more light-hearted nature than seemed right to me for a piece entitled “concerto”. I tried to achieve a “leggiero”, a lightness such as is found at times in French music, to which this composition is indebted. In the three movements, slow tempi dominate, and in the solo instrument these are at times filled with many fast ornamentations of the slow basic tempo. Even the exceptionally fast-beginning final movement progresses in its second part into a more serene sonority. The first movement, marked “Rêverie”, is a game with the tone colours of the clarinet, with its octave positions, and its song-like qualities which are also to the fore in the second movement, “Intermède”; during its calm, pavane-like advance, a “Valse à la musette” tries to push its way into the foreground at various points. The final movement, marked “Caprice”, begins with great agility and nimbleness. Then, over a long extended pedal note in the strings, it once again exploits the immense tonal range of the clarinet to a concluding song, accompanied by orchestral chords, which ends with a coda.

Manfred Trojahn