Klarinet Archive - Posting 000181.txt from 1996/07

From: R Tennenbaum <rtenn@-----.COM>
Subj: Re: Bashing Brahms
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 19:50:13 -0400

On Wed, 10 Jul 1996 10:45:55 PDT you wrote:

>Mr. Cadenza wrote about the Finzi bagatelles:
>
>>Yes they are geat pieces. I don't think I've ever played music that is so
>>well written for the combination of CL and piano. Too bad Brahms didn't
>>understand how to balance those instruments.
>
>I'd like to hear more specifically about what you mean re: the Brahms.
>I just got Harold Wright/Peter Serkin doing the two sonatas. Although
>I believe the music to be almost perfect, I find the two instruments,
>when doing these pieces, hard to listen to. Is that what you mean?
>The music, the parts, are gorgeous. But I feel like a battle is being
>waged. I don't that way about the quintet. Would enjoy hearing
>your thoughts. ----Bill Fogle.
>

I can't speak for anyone else, but I think a little Brahms-bashing is
healthy now and again. I have only played the first sonata a couple
of times with a real pianist, but I have of course heard them played
by great clarinetists, and I must say I sometimes wonder what he was
thinking about with that piano part. The clarinet lines are lithesome
and delicate, but the piano tends (to this ear, anyway) to the bombast
and reined-in hysteria of Brahms at his worst. Fortunately both
clarinet sonatas are free of the muddled and quasi-sentimental
perorating that bother me about some of his chamber music (I have a
hard time listening to most of his chamber works for strings).

Compare the character of the instruments in the Brahms clarinet
sonatas with say, the violin sonata of Cesar Franck (roughly
contemporary) -- a glorious instance of a composer permitting two
quite different instruments to sing with/against each other, almost in
a kind of courtship.

Rafe T.
Readme @-----.com/~rtenn