Klarinet Archive - Posting 000041.txt from 1996/03

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: An interesting experience
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 11:21:56 -0500

Last Thursday night, I went to a performance of Mozart's Magic Flute
in Berkeley, CA as put on by the Berkeley Opera Company. While it was
not an amateur production by any standards, it was also not a fully
professional production either. But it was put on with a great deal of
love and the conductor, George Cleve, invested the performance with
considerable energy.

My wife and I were sitting in the theatre about 15 minutes before
the opera began and I heard the sound of a basset horn warming up, and
then a second. So I went and peeked into the pit to see what it was
that was being played on and I got quite a shock. While both
instruments were LeBlancs, one of them had a straight wooden bell!
I had not seen a b.h. with a wooden bell since Steve Trier in London
showed me his instrument and spoke of what he believed to be the
advantages, and that was at least 12 years ago.

I also had attempted to have a wooden bell made for one of my basset
horns (no longer mine) and Clark Fobes was all set to provide the
instrumental work providing a colleague of his would do the bell itself.
But the price was so very high (not Clark's, the wood turner's price)
that I was dissuaded from the experiment. And I am not being critical
of the wood turner either. It's a tough job.

Anyway, I asked the clarinet player with the wooden basset horn bell
where he got such a thing, and he told me that Ted Planas (now deceased),
an American who lived and worked in the UK, had made it for him at the
request of Steve Trier with whom this guy was studying at the time.
Small world, no?

I never had much of a chance to ask the guy what his reaction to a wooden
bell was (as contrasted with a metal one), but I am not sure that at a
distance of 20 or more years he would be able to remember what a metal
bell was like. Trier's view was that a metal bell reinforced all of the
less pleasant aspects of a basset horns sound. I don't know if this
is true, but Trier also had a wooden bell made for his bass clarinet.

The first clarinet player in one of Melbourne's major orchestras also had
a wooden bell for his basset horn made locally. He might have made it
himself.

Sigh. I never had one. But they are rare to see and I saw one last
Thursday evening.

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
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