Klarinet Archive - Posting 000150.txt from 1994/11

From: Josias Associates <josassoc@-----.COM>
Subj: Re: Some advice on Prokovieff Sextet
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 1994 04:12:42 -0500

On Tue, 8 Nov 1994, Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu wrote:

> I was just asked to play the Prokovieff "Overture on Hebrew Themes." I
> know the work well having first played it in the late 1940s after having
> studied it with Dave Weber in NY.

Dan,

I have a few comments on this piece, but first I felt impelled to
ask whether you knew someone I played with in the early 1950s who studied
with Weber. His name was Dr. Kas Zeisler.

> I always played it like the Brahms quintet; i.e., serious music, dignified,
> dull.
>
> Now with the resurgence of Klezmer I want to rethink the piece. Is it a
> Klezmer work? Should it swing or is it irrelevant to Klezmer performance?
>
> I just don't know.

I have performed this thing numerous times, and the style
question seems to come up less among clarinetists than it does
with certain string players who expect to be hearing traditional
middle-European klezmer music. They seem to think that, if the
clarinetist merely plays the solo part dirty or unrefined, the piece
will miraculously become the klezmer music they are certain
Prokofieff intended.

While the music does have some klezmer-style construction, it is
my opinion that it was the composer's intent to write a piece of classical
folk music and not a klezmer-style selection. He built in folk quality
in several ways. One was through the use of extreme dynamic contrasts
such as in the repeated use of exaggerated arched phrases (up and down
hairpins). Another way was in the frequent use of throat-register
passages, which, according to my theory, he believed were not possible to
play smoothly and refined, because of the limitations of the instrument.
What he hadn't bargained for was the improved technique of modern
symphony players who seem to be able to make everything sound smooth and
refined. A third way in which he built in folk quality was in the
remarkable second theme, a melancholy plaintive lament introduced by the
cello -- a lament containing an unforgettable and haunting set of chord
progressions.

> Furthermore, when the piece began to be popular in the 1040s (and Prokovieff
> was still alive then), it was rumored that the two main melodies of the piece
> (which are NOT folk songs, but simply sound that way) were creations of
> Simeon Bellison who was then 1st clarinet with the NYP.

I've heard various stories about the genesis of the composition,
some asserting that the themes were completely original Prokofieff
inventions. In his book, "Guide to Chamber Music," author Melvin Berger
has this to say (pp. 338, 339) about Prokofieff and the Overture:

"...........While living in New York in the fall of 1919, he was asked by
a group of former classmates from the St. Petersburg Conservatory to
write a piece for them on Jewish themes. The group, called Zimro,
consisting of a string quartet, clarinet, and piano, had come to America
to raise money for a conservatory in Jerusalem by giving concerts of
chamber music works by Jewish composers. [My note here: Method books
assembled by Simeon Bellison in the 1940s identified him as being a
member of the European touring group, "Zimro."] Since Prokofieff was not
Jewish and did not know Jewish folk themes, they gave him a notebook
filled with traditional melodies to use as a source.
"Prokofieff refused at first; he did not approve of writing music
based on borrowed themes. But one day as he was glancing through the book
of Jewish songs, 'to while away the time,' he began improvising at the
piano on a few of the melodies. Suddenly, he said, he 'noticed that
somehow whole sections began to take shape. I worked all of the following
day and sketched out the entire overture.' It took him ten more days to
complete the score, and Zimro gave the highly successful first
performance in New York on January 26, 1920."

> I'm open to all suggestions and that includes (1) leave it alone - it's
> Brahms, (2) swing like the Klezmaniacs, etc.

Dan, my feeling about this piece is that it doesn't require the
addition of schmaltz to succeed. Although I can't prove it, I'd be
willing to bet that Bellison played it as written, with devoted attention
to the Composer's dynamic contrasts, which impart a good presentation of
the folk style within a classical framework.

Connie

Conrad Josias
Engineering Consultant
Josias Associates
La Canada, California
josassoc@-----.com

   
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