Klarinet Archive - Posting 000901.txt from 1999/09

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Marcellus and K. 622
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 13:33:36 -0400

Greg Smith asks if I am "suggesting that Marcellus' performance on the
1961 recording will go the way of 1940's Stokowsky/Philadelphia/Bach,
are you?"

And the answer is "mostly Yes."

Working against Marcellus is time, just as it worked against other great
performances of 622 including Kell, Bellison, and probably another half
dozen which are not heard at all any longer. Personally I find it
painful to listen to Bellison recordings because the passage of time
has broadened the canyon between the way he saw those works and the way
I see those works, and I am speaking about many issues outside of
improvisation.

It is not dissimilar to seeing my grandfather in a 1910 suit. It
probably was the cat's meow at the time he bought it, but it is out
of style today and we would only wear such things to a costume party.

Mostly the areas are phrasing and articulations but there is (to my
ears) an awkwardness that I do not hear in some contemporary performances.
And I heard Bellison live (though not in K. 622 but in K. 581). At the
time I was overwhelmed.

The same thing will happen to Marcellus. In 25 years, younger players
will hear his performance as awkward and old fashioned, improvisation
notwithstanding (and in some case, improvisation very much withstanding).
They will say, "How can he play that melody the same way twice? He would
have had to have been a stone not to modify that melody in it second
presentation."

And in another 100 years, when everything has swung 180 degrees the other
way, the next generation will reassume the romantic more-conservative
mantle and say, "We must never modify the composer-written text." But
by that time, Marcellus (and you and I) will be part of a generation that
"never understood the true nature of Mozartean performance which can only
be correctly achieved when performed with a monks robe and a cowel in any
case."

The life cycle of almost any player's accomplishments hardly ever
exceeds a century. I'm not speaking of Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Saens,
etc. but rather people life Hoffman and Nickish and others who were
the creme de la creme in their epochs. Even, to a great degree, Liszt
and Paganinni. For these men, we don't even have recorded performances
to listen to any longer.

So ask me about Marcellus in 2025 and we shall see.

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

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