Klarinet Archive - Posting 000583.txt from 1999/05

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] basset clarinet and K622
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 03:46:35 -0400

> From: MX%"klarinet@-----.86
> Subj: Re: [kl] basset clarinet and K622

> On Thu, 13 May 1999 15:56:31 -1300, leeson@-----.edu said:
>
> > > As a young lad, not having an A clarinet, I used to play some of the
> > > Mozart last movement on my Bb along with Reginald Kell's 78 rpm
> > > record on our family radiogram. It had an adjustable speed, and I
> > > just set it so that it would be in tune.
>
> [snip]
>
> > This anecdote is absolutely remarkable. I used to do the same thing
> > but without an adjustable turntable. I simple pulled the clarinet
> > out at every conceivable joint until the intonation would have
> > frightened the Medusa. Then I played it over and over and over.
>
> What a hoot that we both did the same thing....
>
> > As I remember, the 78 rpm disks were in a box that had a little wooden
> > peg that went through the record holes. Never saw another like it.
>
> Ah, this is the advanced version. We only had *the one disc*.
>
> > Years later I wanted to tell Kell this when I met him at a party
> > in Monterey. He refused to talk about clarinets or clarinet playing
> > and kept changing the subject. He had become very bitter.
>
> Bitter about what?

He was a very angry and bitter man towards the end of his life. He
felt, and rightly so, that the American clarinet players had laid
waste to his career. His playing was belittled, his vibrato exaggerated,
his wonderful playing style ridiculed. He was not a happy camper when
he died. John Denman got his clarinets I think.

>
> I do remember going to a talk he gave, promoting Boosey and Hawkes
> clarinets. I must have been about 14 or so. I remember that someone
> queried the intonation of the instruments, and he was very scathing,
> saying that *he* had no problems with them, and that intonation was a
> function of being a good player, not of having a good clarinet.
>
> Tony
> --
> _________ Tony Pay
> |ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
> | |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
> tel/fax 01865 553339
>
>
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=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================

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