Klarinet Archive - Posting 000711.txt from 2004/03

From: "Joseph Wakeling" <joseph.wakeling@------.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] G. B. Shaw and Brahms; was, G. B. Shaw
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 12:43:42 -0500

Courtesy of Michael Bryant's website, http://www.bryant14.demon.co.uk/ :

Potential typo: shouldn't it be "latest exploit *of* the Leviathan
Maunderer"?-)

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Only the other day I remarked that I was sure to come Brahms' new clarionet
quintet sooner or later. And, sure enough my fate overtook me last week at
Mr G. Clinton's Wind Concert at the Steinway Hall. I shall not attempt to
describe this latest exploit on the Leviathan Maunderer. It surpasses my
utmost expectations: I never heard such a work in my life. Brahms' enormous
gift for music is parallelled by nothing on earth but Mr Gladstone's gift
for words: it is verbosity which outfaces its own commonplaceness by dint of
sheer magnitude. The first movement of the quintet is the best; and had the
string players been on sufficiently easy with terms with it, they might have
softened it and given effect to its occasional sentimental excursions into
dreamland. Unluckily they were all preoccupied with the difficulty of
keeping together; and they were led by a violinist whose bold, free,
slashing style, though useful in a general way, does more harm than good
when the strings need to be touched with great tenderness and sensitiveness.

Mr Clinton's played the clarionet part with scrupulous care, but without
giving any clue to his private view of the work, which, though it shews off
the compass and contrasts the registers of the instrument in the usual way,
contains none of the haunting phrases which Weber, for instance, was able to
find for the expression of its idiosyncrasy. The Presto of the third
movement is a ridiculously dismal version of a lately popular hornpipe. I
first heard it at the pantomime which was produced at Her Majesty's Theatre
a few years ago; and I have supposed it to be a composition of Mr Solomon's.
Anyhow, the street-piano went through an epidemic of it; and it certainly
deserved a merrier fate than burying alive in a Brahms quintet.

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