Klarinet Archive - Posting 000820.txt from 2003/08

From: "Michael Bryant" <michael@-----.uk>
Subj: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Re:_=5Bkl=5D_Esquisses_H=E9bra=EFques?=
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 17:40:49 -0400

After some correspondence with Claude Abravanel,
I have copies of some manuscripts in the Bellison
Collection. I will explore the relevant boxes next week.
They are not necessarily the same as Kloecker's selection.
The catalogue was published in 1993 and contains 112
original compositions. I have a suspicion that there are not
many masterpieces ...

I also have copies of the printed scores of Krein's
Jewish Sketches Op 12 and 13, from Manchester
Public Library.

There are at least two other CDs of Alexander Krein's
music, which, between them, do not duplicate anything:
ASV CDA 1154 containing Op 12 (Elizabeth Drew - cl)
Largo 5136 containing Op 13 (Neyire Ashworth - cl)

MB

Dan Leeson wrote on Thursday, August 28, 2003 5:08 PM
Subject: [kl] Esquisses Hébraïques

> 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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