Klarinet Archive - Posting 000098.txt from 1999/05

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Today's NY Times (5/4/99)
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 16:41:07 -0400

A glorious review of the Met Opera orchestra's concert of Sunday afternoon
appears in The Living Arts section of today's NY Times. In it, the
following statement is made about Ricardo Morales' playing of K. 622:

"The concert began with a beguiling performance
of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto featuring Ricardo
Morales, who became principal clarinet with the
orchestra in 1993 at age of 21. And if the concert
had offered nothing else, the audience would have
gone home happy. Mr. Morales played with fleet
technique, utterly natural musical grace and the
lyricism and breath control of a fine opera singer."

A photo of Ricardo playing the work is given and he is executing
on a basset clarinet in A. (Perhaps he will get one in B-flat
to play the Titus solo next time the opera gets back into the
Met's repertoire. One can always hope.)

We live in wonderful, exciting, and changing times for clarinet
players. Twenty years ago, the very idea of playing 622
on a basset clarinet would have been a cause celebre. Today,
more and more performers are using the instrument. In a few years,
players who do NOT use them when playing 581 or 622 will be open
to serious criticism from the cognoscenti (and rightly so).

As a much younger man I heard about Dazely's paper in which he
offered the then unproven hypothesis that performances of 622
were being done on a clarinet of insufficient compass. Today,
his work is forgotten but its impact is being seen in more and
more places. Remarkable. It seems to me that it took much more
time for the Boehm system clarinet to replace its predecessor.

Some day, the basset clarinet will be the standard instrument for
orchestral work, composers will write for the extended compass
and we will have reached a new platform of clarinet playing.

We live in interesting times.

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

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