Klarinet Archive - Posting 000326.txt from 2003/12

From: Dan Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] A little pat on the back for me from me to me and by me
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 12:12:52 -0500

Last night (Saturday, 12/13) at around 10:30 my wife and I were lying in
bed propped up on pillows and watching TV. There was nothing of
importance or interest on the tube (which speaks poorly for broad band
cable TV with something like 150 channels available to me), so getting
ready to go to sleep, I slipped one of the three broad band classical
music channels. I like to go to sleep by being lulled. The three
channels are chamber music, opera, and general light classics (which can
get pretty heavy at times).

I chose chamber music and a Schubert violin sonata was being played, the
very music to go to sleep by (no disrespect intended to Schubert).
Well, the sonata finished within a few minutes and while still awake I
heard the beginning of the next selection. It was the Gran Partitta
(misspelled, of course, as Partita, but I'll get that spelling change
made eventually, though probably not in my lifetime).

Eyes popped open and I sat up to see the record information. It was the
Berlin Phil under the direction of Mehta and suddenly I was wide awake.
Which edition was he going to take, mine (and Neal Zaslaw's) or the
older and discredited Breitkopf & Hartel (still sold under Kalmus' name)?

I needed only to hear the first measure to confirm that it was not the
Kalmus (which has a "p" on the third beat while mine stays at full "f"
for several measures. Now they had my interest.

But what would happen when they came to the 5th movement and m. 111
(about which Tony Pay and I have had an infinite number of fascinating
discussions). Would they include it (as I suspect is Tony's current
thinking, though he is liberal on the matter), or would they exclude it
(which is what I believe Mozart explicitly requested in the manuscript
though in an ambiguous way)?

First let me say that the personnel in the Berlin Phil were simply
magnificent. The playing was beyond praise. Their execution was like a
person flicking a fly off his arm, so effortless is the task to the
fly-flicker and the Berlin phil players.

When it came to the 5th movement, I was at the edge of the bed. And
when it came to m. 111, I was simply delighted to hear that Mehta had
excluded it at my explicit request in both the edition, technical
papers, and screaming at everyone who insists on leaving the erroneous
measure included, and thereby getting a lot of conductors pissed off at me.

The only criticism I can launch at the playing (except for one final
bassoon solo in the last movement) is that the players would not depart
from the text. For example, the eingang played by the clarinet in the
fifth movement occurs 5 times (I think, I haven't counted it recently)
was played exactly the same way every time. One would have to be made
of stone to play that little lead in the same way every time. There was
no improvisation whatsoever in any of the places where it should have
been done, such as the great trio of oboe, clarinet, and basset horn in
the third movement. The world cries when such opportunities as this are
completely passed by, like ignoring a pile of gold available to anyone
who sees it, but does not, as apparently Mehta and/or the Berlin phil
players did not.

It's like drinking 1/2 glass of Chateau Lafitte, 1929 when an entire
glass was available if you know where to look for it. Very sad. But
the solo bassoon in his final presentation of the "grab your hat and
coat and scram" theme of the final movement saved the day for me. It
was a delightful, tasteful, and sensitive set of improvisations and it
illuminated the entire performance.

After it was over, I turned off the tv, put on my breathing machines
(because of sleep apnia) and was unconscious in 5 minutes. But as I
drifted off, the thought came to my mind that, with respect to the
elimination of m. 111 in the fifth movement, "I did that, and no one
else in the world. Just me. That's my legacy. And anyone who thinks it
wrong can go and perform auto-erotic fantasies on themselves."

As legacies go, it isn't much, but a lot of people leave a lot less as
they move on to the great chamber music hall in the sky. I had an uncle
who left a button collection. Feh!! Take out a measure of Mozart's
music in an important composition and have it being performed that way
around the world? Now that's better than my uncle's button collection.
--
Dan Leeson
leeson0@-----.net

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