Klarinet Archive - Posting 000044.txt from 1995/09

From: Tomas Andreason <ebctmas@-----.SE>
Subj: von Koch - Monolog no 3. The story of the first (or the second?)
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 07:33:01 -0400

>Tomas, does Kjell Fageus speak English? If so I will call him to see
>whether or not he recorded it already.

Yes, Kjell speaks English (he has studied at Juillard), so you should have
no problem talking to him.
I called him today, and it turns out my memory was right, wrong, but then
sort of right after all.

Kjell did the first performance of the work in 1975. He has recorded it for
a radio broadcast, but that was all there was until now. There is now a
recording due out in a few weeks, but it was not originally planned to
include the monolog. This is what he told me on the phone:

Last fall, on the 28th of September, he was in a church to record two solo
sonatas for his record. On this morning, the shocking news broke that the
passenger ferry "Estonia" had gone down in the Baltic Sea with 1000 people
on board on its way from Stockholm to Tallinn. He was very moved (as were
most of us over here) by the terrible news, feeling first that clarinet
playing was totally meaningless, but then that it was the only thing he
could do at such a moment, and that it was absolutely essential to life. In
a few hours, he recorded all the written music that he had with him, 12
pieces in all, including the monolog.
He says this recording is the only one he's made that he stands for 100%

In the program notes for the record (which Kjell faxed me today) is a poem
by his wife, Lena, which I take the liberty to translate here:

DAWN

night opens unto day

tranquil morning
all is too late
all has just begun

silence over the water
mute cries
that noone hears

light comes as a wave
flowing gently over chaos
new skin is
caressed over skinlessness

a lone voice
sings life
into the day
that is born out of night

---

Regards to all of you from
Tomas Andreason,
still moved when
remembering the disaster
..

The other pieces on the record are
Mikael Edlund - Solo (1971)
Hans Eklund - 4 pezzi brevi (1963)
Malte Peterson - solocaprice (1975)
Csaba Deak - Sonatina (1956)
Hilding Rosenberg - Sonata (1960)
Ingvar Lidholm - Amicizia (1980)
Gunnar Bucht - Klarinettstudie 59 (1959)
Igor Stravinsky - Three pieces (1919)
Olivier Messiaen - Abime des oiseaux from Quator pour la Fin du Temps (1940)
Claude Debussy - Syrinx (1910)
Malcolm Arnold - Fantasy for clarinet (1966)

The CD is called "Lonely souls" and is on the "Opus 3" label with number
CD19406.