Klarinet Archive - Posting 000615.txt from 2002/07

From: "Michael Bryant" <michael@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] ...for the A clarinet? Yes!
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 10:25:30 -0400

Hello Tony! Thanks. If I have you on my fishing line,
I will not attempt to haul you in.
Op 73 was dedicated to Andreas Grabau, who was not a clarinettist?
So what did he play? I honestly do not know much more than that.
Pamela told me 30 years ago that he played the cellist.
(Btw, her newest book is out at last, (-:))

It would be good for all if the number of actual contributors to the
klarinet
(like Tony) were larger. Oops! I sometimes feel there are slightly too many
questions and not enough answers. And some of the answers that I have
read recently (not Tony's) have been wrong . (Stay in after school, those
people).
Now its time for me to make swift exit, before you start
unrestrainedly throwing rotten tomatoes, bags of flour, custard pies,
other perishable foodstuffs and the tea goes overboard, again!

MB

Tony Pay wrote Monday, July 22, 2002 12:53 PM
Subject: [kl] ...for the A clarinet? Yes!

> --- Michael Bryant <michael@-----.uk> wrote, in part:
>
> > 1849 Schumann Op 73 (for cello originally)
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Oo, boo, poo.
>
> Not so, though they (the 'cellists) would like to think so.
>
> I remember hearing the Russian'cellist Natalia Gutman give an execrable
> performance of this piece, and go on to give a wonderful account of the
> Britten Sonata.
>
> There was a Russian colleague of mine with me who knew her (I didn't),
> and afterwards, when we went round, she said to him, "Well, do you
> *still* think it's better on the clarinet?"
>
> I didn't actually say this to her, but the only response was that like
> many 'cellists, what she had played wasn't the 'it' that Schumann
> wrote. She had played something completely different, changing mood,
> dynamics, phrasing and, often, notes, almost always for the worse, and
> in a way that perfectly communicated her own self-importance.
>
> I have an idea why the Britten was so much better. It's that, with a
> modern composer, people think that the job is to *play* what's written.
> Whereas with Schumann, they think that the job is to *change* what's
> written.
>
> It's a common misconception.
>
> Just so that I'm not misunderstood here, there is still an infinite
> variety of possible performances of a piece available to a player who
> *doesn't* change what's written.
>
> Tony
>
>
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