Klarinet Archive - Posting 000825.txt from 1998/03

From: Neil Leupold <nleupold@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: Ricardo Morales -Nielsen
Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 11:44:13 -0500

On Fri, 13 Mar 1998, RCLARINET wrote:

> No, Neil, I wasn't taking issue about how you "feel" about Ricardo's
> tone. I was taking issue with your negative statements about his tone
> in the above passage and the passage prior to that in the same posting
> where you called his tone on the Nielsen something like "fair to
> crappy" -----I can't quite recalled the precise wording. ( I also have
> a recording of that performance > and his sound was fine).

His tone on the tape was "fair-to-crappy" because, as I stated in the
same sentence, the recording I have is a magnetic cassette tape dub to
another cassette tape. However, I suspect that even a good recording
would find me unenamored of his tone. There is such a broad range of
successful tone qualities in the professional clarinet world, and I've
developed preferences just like anybody else. Where I find both
Ricardo's and Larry Combs' tone qualities to be on the dry side
(whatever that means to anybody other than myself), I find Shifrin's
tone to be rich and full of color. Some of Stoltzman's recordings
of the 70's have the most beautiful tone I've ever heard, yet I can't
help wondering if any of that was achieved through a certain degree of
technical jiggery pokery. The point that I was making throughout the
commentary of my previous posts, however, which was intended to be the
focus of the discussion, was that subjective understandings of tone
aside, the quality of superior musicianship readily eclipses any other
considerations when listening to an accomplished performer like
Ricardo. In years past, I always had great difficulty listening
to somebody with objectionable tone quality (i.e.; one of the three
British queens, or Drucker, or Brunner, etc.) and enjoying the musical
gestures they were making. Hearing clarinet players using non-clarinet-
ist's ears proved to be a challenge given that, as a clarinetist myself,
I've spend so many years working on the quality of my own tone. Ricardo
turned out to be my cure. His tone is not objectionable, but it isn't
of the quality which I find the most beautiful, yet all of this is
relegated to irrelevance in light of his musicianship. The quality
of his tone -- good or bad -- has no effect on the impact of his
music. I've gone from hearing clarinet music merely as a clarinetist
to hearing clarinet music as a musician.

Neil