Klarinet Archive - Posting 000583.txt from 2000/06

From: "David B. Niethamer" <dnietham@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] review of Allan Blank's Clarinet Concerto
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 23:11:54 -0400

Hi fellow KLARINETers -

I saw Gerry Errante at the end of May when I was playing Porgy and Bess
in Norfolk, and he mentioned that he had seen a review of MMC 2053 in
"The New Music Connoisseur". The relevant part is excerpted below. If you
go to my web pages and follow the "recording" link, you will find a link
to "The New Music Connoisseur". One of their recent issues features Gerry
along with other clarinetists who perform a significant amount of
contemporary repertoire. I haven't figured out how to get back issues yet
- just no time to follow up on it.

Anyway, thought you might be interested.

David
************************************
...Mr. Blank's big work on the disk -- his concerto -- impresses us as a
composition by a mature master, with genuine ideas of his own, despite
the strong hints that he has absorbed enough musical erudition to be a
walking encyclopedia of serious musical history. But such a development
can give a composer more, not less, freedom to write in his own way, even
though we actually find his sly wit to be quite Haydnesque (rather than
Mozartean, as suggested by Lehman). This might be the way Haydn would
have written a clarinet concerto if he lived today. At any rate,
throughout the five movements, the soloist constantly teases the
orchestra with flourishes, arpeggios, trills and sudden dynamic shifts in
a wonderfully artful game of catch-me-if-you-can. And there are some
truly mysterious moments, as well. All of the intricate interplay could
not come off if not for the extrordinay solo wortk of David Niethamer,
Principal Clarinetist of the Richmond Symphony and Artistic Director of
the Richmond Chamber Players.

The quality of the recording is generally high...

B.L.C. (Barry L. Cohen)
<http://users.erols.com/musiconnew/>The New Music Connoisseur
Summer 1998 (Vol. 6, No. 2)

David Niethamer
Principal Clarinet, Richmond Symphony
dnietham@-----.edu
http://members.aol.com/dbnclar1/

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