Klarinet Archive - Posting 001020.txt from 2000/10

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] von Weber Concertino
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 09:22:48 -0400

Will Cicola writes,
>I just looked at my recording of the von Weber concertino, and I noticed
>that the artist is "Antony Pay" with the accompiament listed as the
>"Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment". This wouldn't happen to be the same
>Tony Pay recently lost by this list, would it?

Same Tony Pay. He also conducts the orchestra. IMHO, that recording is as
delightful as it is technically impressive. If anyone's looking for the
recording, it's on a set of two CDs, Virgin Veritas 61585, with both Weber
concertos and the Op. 26 Concertino on one CD recorded in 1987, and the
Crusell concertos 1, 2 and 3 on the other CD, recorded in 1990. I think Tony
catches the sense of *fun* in Weber, especially in the Concertino.

How times have changed! As recently as the 1960s, I used to translate
"original instruments" to mean, "sloppy performance." I remember one late
1960s or early 1970s LP in particular, of Handel's "Water Music," that was
nearly unlistenable because the musicians struggled so audibly to make their
historic instruments behave. That record sounded like P.D.Q. Bach without
the humor. Everybody's intonation was approximate at best. The natural
horns blatted out clam after clam, while the strings scratched and scraped
with the curved bows and short fingerboards. A noble effort, but -- yipes!
I felt obliged to listen to the whole thing, out of a grim sense of duty
toward history or something, but once was enough, before I put the record in
the yard sale crate.

That sort of thing was common for "original instruments" performances in
those days. IMHO the pipe organ and harpsichord players (including the
pioneering Wanda Landowska and Ralph Kirkpatrick on hpschd) were decades
ahead of the rest of the musical world in championing and mastering
top-quality antique or replica instruments. I loved and kept many of those
early keyboard recordings. But today, it seems to me that the many excellent
musicians choosing to study the antique strings and winds have improved the
overall quality of these recordings tremendously. Many of them, including
Tony Pay's, sound first-rate to me, in comparison with recordings made on
modern instruments, too, not just in comparison with other "historic
instruments" performances. Aside from the fascination of trying to figure
out how music sounded during the composer's lifetimes, I enjoy the sound of
the early clarinets and basset clarinets for their own sake.

I'm glad I'm not forced to choose between rigorously historical and
unapologetically modern approaches, with every gradation in between. Instead
of pitting the better instruments and musicians against each other in a
rivalry, to declare who's *best* or which style is more legitimate, I'd
rather enjoy the full variety of approaches with their various advantages and
disadvantages. Big world. Lots of room.

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~
"They show you how detergents take out bloodstains. I think if you've got a
T-shirt with bloodstains all over it, maybe your laundry isn't your biggest
problem."
-- George Carlin
~~~~~~~~~

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