Last week I had a chance to perform the A major concerto by Carulli in front of an orchestra. I don’t play often the concertos but it happens and then it’s like the first time again. This time the event called for a happy classical piece with maximum duration of 10-12 min. So I chose Carulli’s 1st mvt. I had not played it before so I started practising a month before to be sure that I can play from memory.

The conductor rearranged the partiture a bit. He added some timpanis and of course, we had the ad libitum cornos. I wrote my own cadenza and I think the overall impression of the piece was quite fresh.

I found several editions of this concerto, even a 2nd mvt by some diletant that did not sound like Carulli at all but has somehow made its way to the printing house. Differences in text were so big that finally I did my own version. The melody part was pretty constant in all the versions but the other voices and basses… Well, some guys had just forgot them and the others had composed some really uncomfortable voicings. My old teacher’s manuscript seemed to be one of the most realistic settings which I started to work on.

The same goes for the cadenza. A cadenza should be written or improvised by the player anyway. What I use to do in this case is to through all the themes and do a little development. For example here I put the main them into C-major and the second theme to F-major. I don’t know how orthodox that is but it sounded good. If someone is interested I can send. Still waiting for the video to be ready. Let’s hope that it will be something to be proud of 🙂 Who knows, from inside the orchestra everything always sounds so wrong..

I would be glad to hear any experiences with that piece of music!