Klarinet Archive - Posting 000286.txt from 2003/09

From: "Musician" <musicians@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Weber Concertino notes from Ken Shaw (was very good)
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 11:51:56 -0400

The topic recently was the Weber Concertino and I just came across a saved
article that Ken Shaw replied to someone a while back - am reposting it as
it was very good:
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Kerri wrote:
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Hi everyone,
well, i'm currently working on the Concertino (26) by Von Weber for NJ
region auditions. It's actually going pretty well but i can't play the
sixteenth and eightth note runs that fast and even. Can anyone suggest how i
can increase my speed and be even at the same time.
Thanx.

Kerri

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Kerri -

Ahh, the Concertino. My very first high school solo and ensemble competition
piece, and one of the great ones.

First, get a good recording and listen to how it goes, ideally. The Jon
Manassee recording is my favorite. I think it is still in print on the
Xclent label.

How to Smooth Out the Fast Passages

The problem you are having with the fast passages is that sometimes moving
from one note to the next involves just 1 finger (say, low C to low D), and
sometimes it involves many fingers in contrary motion (as in going over the
break). The more complex movements tend to take more time, and it's also
hard to keep them as clean as the easy ones.

Therefore, you need to single out the hard finger movements and clean them
up. As you have found, you do *not* achieve this by just running through a
passage over and over. The following method isolates each interval and lets
you work on it individually.

Beginning *very* slowly, play the passage in pairs of quadruple-dotted 16ths
and 128ths, repeating each pair until you have it clean and snappy. At the
beginning, play just the first note; stop and take a small breath; then
"snap" from the second to the third notes as quickly as possible, repeating
until it is clean; stop and take a small breath; then "snap" from the 4th to
the 5th note, and so on. Then leave out the breaths and work up gradually to
close to performance tempo. Notice that you are working on the transition
between notes 2 and 3, then 4 and 5 and so on.

Then begin again with a 128th followed by a quadruple-dotted 16th. This
isolates the transitions you skipped, between notes 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and so
on.

Work up both versions slurred and tongued.

When you finish, you will have isolated and cleaned up the transition
between each note and the next. Then, go back to straight 16ths, which will
be almost magically smooth.

(A tough but effective way to perfect your technique is to work this
exercise through all the scales, chords and other patterns in Part 3 of the
Baermann method. It's a big mountain to climb, but all professionals have
done it.)

-----------------------

Now, let's make some music.

Working out the notes is only one-third of the work of preparing the
Concertino. You also have to be aware of and show two other important things
to your audience.

Variation Form - The Theme Must Always Be Heard

The Concertino is a theme and variations. That means that you must always be
aware of where the notes of the theme appear in each variation. Take a
pencil and go through each variation, marking each theme note where it
appears among all the decoration. Then, when you perform, you must "pick
out" each theme note, for yourself and the audience. The theme is like the
skeleton, and the rest of the notes are like the muscles and skin. The shape
of the notes is determined by the skeleton. If that's not there, the piece
collapses into a shapeless mess.

By the way, parts of the theme also appear in the transitional passages,
such as the fast passage after the initial statement of the theme and before
the triplet variation marked "Variation 1" and also the transitional passage
between Variation 2 and the slow Variation 3.

Bring Out the Changes of Mood

The Concertino has constant changes of mood, which it is your job to bring
out. Your first entrance must be as soft as possible, but also intense. This
long note (clarion Bb) calls for "messa di voce" (a crescendo and then
decrescendo). It's your calling card. You let the audience know you're
there. It's more than just a crescendo and decrescendo. In addition to
getting louder, your sound must also get bigger, warmer and more colorful.
Weber was primarily a composer of operas, and the effect he is looking for
is like an opera singer starting a note softly and "closed in" and then
opening the tone up like a flower, showing it to the audience, and then
closing it back up. This isn't easy to imitate on clarinet, but you need to
do something. Add some vibrato. Make the sound brighter as well as louder,
by pointing the tip of your chin down and pulling your lower lip out from
over your teeth, so that at least half of the red part is outside your
teeth. An opera singer will face to one side and then swing slowly to the
other, to give all parts of the audience the chance to hear his/her
beautiful voice. Raise the bell up to get more sound out, and do the swing
yourself with the instrument. You can't afford to be timid or embarrassed.
This is your chance to shine.

The rest of the introduction is about quick changes in color, contrasting
high and low notes, then building up to a climax on the ascending chain of
trills, and relaxing to a mysterious ending on the lowest notes of the
instrument.

So, the introduction is about contrasts and short episodes. The theme is
completely different. It must be jaunty, attractive and uncomplicated. The
second half becomes more legato. Play it smoothly, so that when the jaunty
beginning part comes back, the difference is obvious.

Next comes the furious transitional passage, where you show off your
technique for the first time. Don't push it too hard. If you play it
perfectly even, it will sound much faster than it is.

The first variation (in triplets) is another change in mood -- smooth and
rather serious, in contrast to the jaunty theme and the furious transition.
Remember to pick out the notes of the theme and "drape" the other notes over
the theme. Another way to think about it is that the notes of the theme are
trees and the notes in between are vines, on which you swing like Tarzan.
You have the advantage that triplets are easier to swing on than duplets.

The second variation, in 16ths, stays fairly smooth but is vigorous and
virtuosic. I prefer not to tongue every note, but instead to slur 2 and
tongue 2, but your teacher may disagree. The main thing here is to be
brilliant but under control. Don't crescendo much on the rising passages.
You will sound louder automatically as you get higher. It's like a wave
rising and falling. Ride over the top of the wave as part of a continuous
motion.

The harmony gets more complex in the following transitional passage. Don't
try to do too much with it, and play through the high Eb to the F# below.
The trill on G calls for another messa di voce. Be sure to crescendo and
then decrescendo, and slow down the trill a little at the end. Be sure to
add the little "eingang" at the end (a 1-cycle trill from F to G), followed
by a tiny breath.

The next transitional passage (which you do not play) winds down the energy
to prepare for the low, minor key variation. (Every set of variations has at
least one variation in the minor.)

Your entry on the low F must be full but not loud. The mood is one of
mystery. Remember to bring out the notes of the theme (even though some of
them are missing). The mood brightens in the second section, but that
happens automatically when you go to the clarion register. Think moonlight,
not sunlight. Keep the tone dark and covered. Let a tiny amount more lower
lip come in over your teeth (but not enough to muffle the sound). Pucker
your lips (it's almost essential to play double lip here) and make an "ooo"
vowel (as in "brood"). If you play this with orchestra, you will get a lot
of help from the horn section, which Weber used better than any other
composer to produce an air of mystery.

At the short transition passage that follows, you play two solo notes (B-C),
answered softly by the accompaniment, and then repeat the pattern (on F-E).
These are appoggiaturas -- that is, a non-harmonic tone (B and F, over a
C-seventh chord), resolving to a harmonic tone (C and E). Give a slow breath
accent on the first note of each pair, which emphasizes the dissonance with
the underlying harmony, and then relax to the resolution. This transition
passage breaks the mysterious mood and prepares the audience for the
fireworks to follow.

The 6/8 variation and finale begins with pairs of notes, similar to the ones
you just played in the transition passage. However, they are off the beat
this time. The accompaniment plays the equivalent of a pizzicatto bass note,
and you play the second and third notes as if you were playing a waltz --
Oom Pa Pa, Oom Pa Pa. This is one place where you can't get it right by
simply playing your part. You have to work off of the downbeat played by
someone else. Start a little slow, and get the waltz "swing" feeling. Then
you can bring the tempo up, but not too much. There's plenty of fireworks
later. In the first part, you establish a light-hearted, easy swinging
style.

There's a difficult spot a couple of bars in, where you play the repeated
B-D-F-D-A-F figure. It's hard to get the F to B descending interval to speak
where the figure starts over. To get the right feeling, work on it as a
simple up-and-down arpeggio, B-D-F-A-F-D. Then keep that smooth and easy
feeling on the actual notes.

The level of technical virtuosity increases from there up to the big bang on
the descending diminished seventh arpeggio, the big sweep up and the
arpeggio down again. When you see disminished seventh harmony, you know the
music is modulating to another key. The diminished seventh chord is all
minor thirds, and so cuts the music loose from its tonal center and lets a
different one be established. Thus the musical mood is automatically
agitated and unsettled, which you emphasize by the big technical show.

The next section is much smoother. It corresponds to the second section of
the theme, which is also more lyrical than the first part. (You have been
marking out the theme notes, haven't you? If not, go back and do it. Where
the original theme is smooth, each variation is also smooth; where the
original is jaunty, the variation is jaunty, and so on. The easiest way to
keep this in mind is to lay out the structure of each variation by marking
the music.)

Weber then works another variation on the two-note figure. You toss
descending third figures back and forth with the orchestra/piano. As before,
you can't learn this practicing alone, but only with the accompaniment.
Notice that the first pair is in D minor (F-D, A-D), but the second pair is
a minor third (A-F#) and then a tritone(C-F#), which everyone in Weber's
time would recognize as a violent clash -- "the devil in music." Actually,
it's the diminished seventh coming back to facilitate the modulation back
into the tonic key of (on the clarinet) F. At the very end of this before
the final section, Weber brings back the horns, this time brassy instead of
mysterious. They light the fuse that sets off an orchestral explosion, and
that propels you into the final section.

Keep a steady tempo the first time through the rising arpeggios at the
beginning of the final section. Then you have the chance to push the tempo a
little the second time through. Don't hurry it too much, though, because the
harmonic rhythm (the changes from one chord to the next) occurs at irregular
intervals, and the audience can't hear that if you play too fast or fail to
bring it out.

Then comes the change from 16ths and 8ths to continuous 16ths, with the
harmony changing regularly and predictably as you swing up and down on the
appeggios. At the beginning of this section, you can drive the tempo faster
on the rising diminished seventh arpeggio (throat A-C-F#-A-C, etc.) and then
take giant steps, sweeping up and down like a roller coaster, 6 notes to the
beat. This propels you into the final ascending runs from the bottom to the
top of the instrument.

After the big display on the three rising rips, drop down as soft as you
dare, and then do your messa di voce on the repeated figures. Play the trill
on the G no louder than single forte. Then do the final sweep and trill to
finish in your most brilliant manner. I like to start all the ascending runs
slightly under tempo and push the tempo as I get higher. However, it can
seem mannered, and the final one I do all at the same furious speed.
However, I do hold the high E a moment, start the trill slowly for a shake
or two and then speed it up.

The final E-F trill is difficult to play quickly with the little finger.
Starting the trill slowly lets you use an alternate fingering. Play the
first couple of shakes with the little finger, and then switch to the top
trill key. Then at the very end, switch back to the standard fingering for a
shake or two, put on the essential eingang D (E-F-E-F-E-D-E-F) to end the
trill neatly.

Don't let the orchestra/piano slow down at all at the very end. If anything,
they speed up, so that the final two chords are exactly in tempo. This
produces a thrilling ending to one of the great display pieces.

SO. More than you bargained for. Now go home and practice.

Good luck.

Ken Shaw
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Was a very good article!!!

David Blumberg
www.TopTempo.com

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