Klarinet Archive - Posting 000219.txt from 2002/03
From: alevin@-----. Levin)
Subj: Re: [kl] Stanford University Concert with Pay and Levin
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 11:37:07 -0500
You GOT to your concert! I think I hate you. I still can't figure out how
we missed the one at Bucknell.
Allen
At 09:05 AM 3/10/02 -0800, you wrote:
>Last evening at Stanford University, the Academy of Ancient Music played
>an all Mozart program with Bob Levin doing the c minor piano concerto,
>K. 491, an improvised fantasy based on themes from the audience, and the
>concert rondo in D major, K. 382. The clarinet section had our
>inimitable Tony Pay and Jane Booth.
>
>It was a hell of an evening!!
>
>For those who know the c minor concerto, the relationship between the
>wind section and the solo piano is appreciated as a spectacular aspect
>of Mozart's genius, and his use of clarinets in a variety of solo
>passages is especially thrilling. Tony was improvising on his solo
>passages as a left-hand/right-hand partner to Levin's improvisations.
>It was quite an accomplishment on both their parts. To give you an idea
>of just how much wind/piano dialogue there is in that work, the second
>movement has only 4 measures of melody played by strings. The rest of
>it is entirely winds -- often solo but also often in ensemble -- and
>piano.
>
>After the concert both Tony and Bob came to my house a for a coffee
>klotch and I complimented Tony extensively on how beautifully he played.
>He brought along his A basset clarinet which he will use today to play
>K. 622 in Santa Barbara, and again in Palm Springs in a few days. Tony
>also played on my new basset horn and was surprised at his reaction to a
>modern instrument as contrasted with his very frequently used original
>instrument basset horn.
>
>Today the band moves on, though Levin is flying back to Boston for
>lectures on jazz at Harvard.
>
>As you are all aware, both Levin and I (and I think Tony, too) are
>strong proponents of improvisation in music of this period. Levin was
>asked for a brief comment in the program about the practice and this is
>a short excerpt from what he wrote:
>
>"Mozart's performances were designed to display his talents as
>improviser, pianist, and composer (that is the order his contemporaries
>assigned to his gifts). His piano concertos contain contrived chasms --
>pauses he bridged with impulsive audacity -- the so-called cadenzas and
>lead-ins. Further, Mozart left many passages in sketched or schematic
>form, relying on the whims of live performance to fill in the specific
>expressive content anew at each performance.
>
>"In the 20th century, musicians have been trained to try piously to
>observe the written testament of the composer. If the will of the
>performer emerges, it is often through flamboyant disregard of those
>instructions in order to use the composition as a mere vehicle for
>self-aggrandizing display. Every performer and listener of classical
>music has experienced the standard repertoire hundreds, even thousands,
>of times more often than the composers who wrote these works, making it
>ever harder to bring to them the daring of the work's initial effect.
>The standardization of many of today's performances reflects all these
>trends.
>
>"Improvisation in Mozart's case requires an intensive character study of
>the entire work from within, for a spontaneous elaboration of the
>written text cannot be pasted onto the music surface. The
>embellishments and improvised portions must heighten the portrayal of
>the work's persona, not be a mere series of commonplace, banal
>conventions (a trill here, a curlicue there. ... In light of [our
>knowledge of Mozartean practices as deduced from evidence], it must be
>said that many of today's performances contain passages executed in a
>manner Mozart would have considered unacceptably incomplete."
>
>[End of quote]
>
>This is absolutely synonymous with comments I have made that suggest
>that many performances and recordings of K. 622, even those made by
>brilliant professionals, sound the same; i.e., you can unplug one great
>soloist, plug in another and hardly notice the difference, so slavishly
>has our attention been given solely to the text of the concerto and its
>flawless execution, while almost none is given to the role of the
>soloist as composer, being part and parcel of the creative process
>through improvisatory playing. I suggest that, with few exception, we
>hardly ever hear that work played in a spirit in which Mozart and his
>contemporaries would have been comfortable. They might be dazzled by
>our technique and execution, but their reaction might be, "Why are they
>playing only what Mozart wrote down? Don't they understand that such
>text is a beginning, and not an end?"
>
>Anyway, it was an exciting night with the orchestra also playing the
>Haffner Symphony and an encore of a march that was composed to precede
>the symphony and which the musicians played as they walked in to begin
>the concert. They also would play it as they walked out following the
>concert.
>
>--
>***************************
>** Dan Leeson **
>** leeson0@-----.net **
>***************************
>
>
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