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Jun 16, 2025
Matthew Westwood

Making Mozart’s Clarinet

Concerts

One of Nicola Boud’s favourite places in Paris is the atelier run by her instrument-maker friend, Agnès Gueroult. Not far from the Opera Bastille, the workshop is off a little courtyard and entering it, Boud says, is like stepping into a clarinettist’s wonderland.

‘You walk into this happy chaos,’ she says. ‘It’s quite messy, but so charming. There’s equipment everywhere and wood shavings all over the floor, and it smells like linseed oil.’

Boud is an eminent clarinettist who plays on historical instruments – from the two-keyed chalumeau of the baroque period, to almost-modern clarinets from the late 19th century – and many of the reproduction pieces in her collection are Gueroult’s handiwork.

Historic clarinets often are made from boxwood, the same shrub that is planted in hedges throughout Europe. In Gueroult’s studio are shelves stacked with harvested pieces of boxwood, ready to be shaped into clarinets.

‘It takes a long time for a boxwood tree to grow big enough to make certain parts of the clarinet,’ Boud says.

‘Time stops when you walk in there.’

For her debut tour for Musica Viva Australia, Boud plays two historic instruments: the five-key Viennese clarinet and the basset horn – a kind of steampunk reed instrument with a brass bell and a barrel set at odd angles like a fantasy piece of plumbing. 

‘It has its moods, it’s quite temperamental – you have to be very calm so it doesn’t squeak,’ she says

‘For me, it really is the essence of Mozart’s music. He uses it in the Requiem, the Gran Partita, The Magic Flute.'

‘The tone is mysterious – it comes from somewhere else,’ she continues. ‘People are always surprised, for such a big instrument, how sweet and vocal it can be. It’s like your favourite alto or mezzosoprano – you can really channel your middle voice.’

Raised in Fremantle, Boud now lives in Ghent with her Belgian husband. The city is within striking distance of the music centres in Europe, and close to The Hague where Boud teaches at the Royal Conservatorium. ‘I’m a frequent traveller on Eurostar,’ she says.

Her introduction to historic clarinets was at a Musica Viva Australia concert in Perth when she was 16. It was a tour by a period-instrument ensemble, Nachtmusique, whose principal clarinet and basset horn, Eric Hoeprich, would later become her teacher at The Hague.

For the young clarinettist it was a revelation.

‘They played Mozart, some Krommer, and I was just gobsmacked,’ she says.

‘I thought, “It makes so much sense – the sound-world, the way the instruments blend, the way they speak to each other”.

Nicola Boud appears with Simon Cobcroft and Erin Helyard in Mozart’s Clarinet, touring to Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth and Sydney from 15-28 July. Tickets start from $65, or $49 for under 40s and $20 student rush.