Klarinet Archive - Posting 000189.txt from 2002/10

From: Tom.Henson@-----.com
Subj: RE: [kl] Brahms Clarinet Sonata No. 2
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 16:43:07 -0400

Thanks Tony for the advice on not trying to copy another person's playing
vs. what caused them to play that way.

I think this is unconsciously what I meant, but after reading the way you
have put it, there is indeed a difference between the two.

What I am getting from listening to these cd's is the impression of tempo
that they should be taken at, whether they were following the dynamic
markings or not, articulation, and so forth. My teacher told me that Brahms
should be pretty much played exactly as written in regards to markings.

I also wanted to hear how well the various artists handled the intervals
around the break and how smooth and unbroken their sound was throughout.
This to me is what I am trying to achieve for myself. A perfect, unbroken
phrasing regardless of interval or break.

I think in listening, I am also trying to hear the work in it's entirety
outside of the performers, so that I may better grasp the emotion with which
it was written and hopefully to better understand the work as a whole.
Chances are that I will not be able to perform the work in it's entirety,
but each movement should still be understood in relation to the whole work
and not practiced as an isolated piece in and of itself.

I think this work is more introspective in mood than an in your face Weber
Concerto. I just don't hear a lot of young (in clarinet years) players
lining up to play this. They seem to want to play the flashier pieces that
have lots of runs and shows off their blazing technique. It seems to me that
you should almost play this work as if you have nothing to prove in
performing it. I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone else, but it
does to me.

My feeling is that technique is very much needed, if not more so in Brahms'
sonatas, but it should always be in the background and never something you
hang out on the wash line for the audience to marvel at.

Regarding Muhlfeld's "alleged" use of vibrato. I think we must gather from
reading Colin Lawson's liner notes that he is "assuming" that because
Muhlfeld was first a violinist, that he must have used vibrato since that is
an integral part of playing the violin. He even suggests that this use of
vibrato in his playing style is what enamored Brahms to him in the first
place. But this is old news, and most of us have heard it all before.

Guessing that you have played this piece many times, have you used vibrato,
and has your interpretation changed over the years as Elise Curran remarked
in his posting on this thread? I would be curious to know.

Tom Henson

Tony Pay commented:

< On another tack: whilst understanding why it's natural to want to listen
to the performances that are available on CDs when you have to play a piece,
it's a mistake to think that producing a satisfactory performance is
guaranteed by 'copying someone else'.

Because the players on those CDs weren't doing anything like 'copying
someone else' when they made the recordings.

What you should try to copy is not 'what they did', but *what they were
doing*. >

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