Klarinet Archive - Posting 000746.txt from 1995/12

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Piotr Michalowski asks about Reginald Kell
Date: Sun, 31 Dec 1995 13:46:44 -0500

I tried on three separate occasions to make some comments on the
subject of Reginald Kell. Each time, it wasn't right so I scratched it
before posting it. This is the third effort. I am glad that Kell can be
the center of a discussion and, for what it is worth, here are my
opinions on the matter.

Reginald Kell's greatest problem was, during his time, he played like
no other clarinet player alive, and that is always a dangerous thing to
do in any epoch. As the Japanese say, a nail that sticks out needs to
be hammered down, and that is what happened with Kell. Because I
am always hollering "be specific" when someone makes a statement
like the one I just made, I intend to be so. Just be patient for a
moment longer.

After WW2, Kell came to America to begin a career as a professional
clarinet soloist, as Stolzman is today. But while a solo
clarinetist is not an aberration today, it certainly was then. And he
was a dramatic player with a special way of playing music that caused
a great deal of animosity. It is not that we did not have great players
in America, nor did Kell have the fastest hands in the world. It had
nothing to do with that. At his level, there were many players of equal
technical competence in America.

I neither know nor care if Kell played with vibrato, excessive or not.
That was never the issue, though it was said to be so by everyone and
his brother. Kell's problem was that no one, absolutely no one under-
stood or played rubato the way he did, and in fact, the art of rubato
playing was really revived by him. Lots of players heard what he did
and then tried it but it never came out the same way, and the reason
was that so few understood rubato because we had no tradition in it.
It was a performance practice that had ceased to be a part of the
clarinet player's vocabulary.

But Kell had read Mozart's description of how he played rubato. It
is in a letter Mozart wrote to his father. There he describes everyone
else's piano playing and how, when they play rubato, both hands slowed
down at the same time and then both sped up at the same time in
order not to injure the tempo; that is, one "robs" time from one
portion of the measure and puts it elsewhere, but the entire measure's
duration remains unaffected by the act. That is what "rubato" means:
to rob time. Mozart said that when he played rubato, one hand kept
at constant speed while the other slowed down and then, later, sped up
so that the bar ending would be right on the money and the time
robbed was paid back within the same bar. It is not easy to do.

And Kell, whenever he played the Brahms sonatas with an
accompanist made certain that, when he played rubato, the
accompanist kept clicking away right on tempo. It was a dramatic
musical effect that almost drove me mad with joy when I heard it.
And no one duplicated it because they never understood his secret and
so, when they tried it, it did not work as well as for Kell. Of course
it didn't. Mozart had found a great way to play rubato in a very
iconoclastic fashion and the only one who made value out of this
information was Kell.

It was in this way that Kell became a nail that stuck up out of the
wood and had to be hammered down. So some very big guns in
American clarinet playing made comments about his "ugly English
sound" (God should have given me such a sound!!), and his "out-of-
character vibrato" (and if someone will tell me what an "in-character
vibrato" is I would be very grateful), etc., etc. But I must have been
too stupid to be influenced by that kind of talk. I didn't know enough
about clarinet playing to understand all the technical details of what
he was being criticized for. I simply listened to his recordings and
quietly went crazy with happiness about the way he played.

Today, something like 20 years after he died, younger player who never
heard him or even knew what he did are talking about Kell's "ugly
English sound" and "out-of-character vibrato." I saw it on this board
when we were discussing the national character of sound and vibrato.
And from whom did they get this view? Guess! Their teachers of
course, who probably got it from their teachers. Remember that Kell's
hey-day was the late 1940s and the 1950s. It was all over for him by
that time. He had become soured to music, to playing, to the clarinet,
and damn near to life. John Denman once told me that he went over
to see Kell and asked to see his clarinets. Kell couldn't even find
them, that's how lost he was to playing.

He did something in a way that no one else in the clarinet playing
world did it, and instead of making him king, that same clarinet
playing world shit all over him. It is one of the most remarkable
tragedies for clarinet playing of the last century.

The realization that an artist of his caliber was lost to the clarinet
playing community and to music in general because of jealousy,
ignorance, and chauvinism was my first step on the path of
iconoclasm. I figured that anyone who played that brilliantly and not
be made emperor showed a flaw in the attitude of clarinet players.
====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================
====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================