Klarinet Archive - Posting 000813.txt from 2003/08

From: Dan Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Esquisses =?ISO-8859-1?Q?H=E9bra=EFques?=
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 14:32:24 -0400

Several weeks ago I reported on a two disk set of quintets for clarinet
and string quartet all based on Jewish themes and recorded by Dieter
Klöcker and the Vlach Quartet of Prague under the title "Esquisses
Hébraïques." This was very much new news to me, but was clearly old
information for some knowledgeable people on this list. I was even
pointed to a website from which I purchased the disks, they arrived and
I have had a very pleasant week listening to them.

Some of them are pleasant but not much more (in my opinion), and a few
are really exceptional. Klöcker played very well but that style is one
that takes years to master, to say nothing of the fact that it also
involves a cultural displacement. It can be learned of course, but only
after time and immersion in the culture. By that I am not speaking of
klezmer because this music is not that at all, but perhaps cantorial
music. Nonetheless, he is owed an enormous debt of gratitude for having
taken the effort of getting the often penciled manuscript parts from
Bellison estate as given to a facility in Israel by his wife in the
1950s, I believe.

Without access to a score and a set of performance parts, these
charming, occasionally very beautiful, works are going to go
underground. So before I start any hard work to prepare such material,
does anyone know better information than mine; i.e., except for
Klöcker's material -- and which he has never been prepared to make
available to others -- the only source for these works is the Rubin
Academy of Music and Dance in Israel, and that is solely a set of
manuscript performance parts, not a printed score or even a score for
that matter? If copies are obtainable I might undertake the task of
preparing the quintets using Finale. But it has always been my "ungluck"
(or bad luck) to spend months preparing something only to find out that
17 other people had already done the work.

So does anyone know anything about this (as contrasted with assertions
about the absolute knowledge that most clarinet players use Buffets to
the exclusion of anything else and are prepared at the drop of a bocal
to avoid the presentation of any evidence in support of that very
questionable assertion)? [The question mark applies to the question, not
to my unrequested, snide, and snotty parenthetical statement.]

DNL
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**Dan Leeson **
**leeson0@-----.net **
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