Klarinet Archive - Posting 000877.txt from 2004/01

From: TBPiercy@-----.com
Subj: RE: [kl] Norwegian clarinet music
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 07:15:24 -0500

from "Heidi & Kyle Mendenhall" <tabyana@-----.com>
"Dear Tom,
Thank you so much for your suggestion! Thommessen is indeed on my list and
I will look for the music to Dark Song. Have you spent time in Norway or
how did you meet Thommessen? I would be interested - I have come across his
name a few times.

Thank you!
Heidi"

Heidi,

I have performed in Norway, but met Olav in NYC. He visited here several
times to meet and work with me and the pianist whie we were preparing an
all-Thommessen concert (we had heard some of his music and were enthralled by his
tonal palette and the way he wrote for different instruments).

When he first visited, I had had my Rossi clarinet for a few months and
really enjoyed "showing off" all the wonderful sounds it could make and how easy
the upper registers could be made to do things. He took those sounds and
techniques and expanded them and sent back a few months later a hauntingly
beautiful, and technically challenging, piece for clarinet and piano: lots of interesti
ng arpeggios and runs ripping rapidly from deep in the low register up to high
Bb, B and Cs; glissandi down from upper altissimo to clarion range; intricate
counterpoint with piano part; super soft floating of high Bbs, Bs and Cs for
12 to 20 and more slow beats - and then he would ask for a diminuendo at the
end of those.
Not written in any key, per se, but not sounding atonal either -- he has his
own sound.

A very dramatic, almost pictorial piece, as are most of his compositions.
(His story that goes along with "Dark Song" has a lot to do with walking amongst
a field of poppies and the dreams and hallucinations coming afterward.)

A wonderfully garrulous man filled with the passion of composing and working
with musicians. I hope you have the opportunity to perform his pieces.
Tom

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