Klarinet Archive - Posting 000222.txt from 2006/01

From: "Doug Sears" <dsears@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] music for Mozart's birthday
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 02:09:33 -0500

I just have to share my joy at the Mozart doings in little old
Eugene, Oregon, USA. This afternoon I went to a free concert at
the university in a hall the size of a large living room with
superb acoustics, and sat in the front row, seven feet from the
performers. This is the way Mozart should be heard! Among the Mozart pieces
played on period instruments was the Kegelstatt trio. Anne McLucas's
reproduction of a Stein fortepiano (Mozart's favorite) has a beautiful
clear sound, nothing like a modern piano. Margret Gries played a Classic
era viola. Michael Anderson, the really excellent principal clarinet at the
Eugene Symphony among other things, played a copy of a five-key instrument
made circa 1790 by Heinrich Grenser of Dresden. As he pointed out, the
cross-fingerings you need for many notes causes a variation in tone-color,
which Mozart used to advantage rather than put up with. I was really
impressed with the beautiful mellow sound of the clarinet. Anderson played
for the most part like he'd been using a 5-key clarinet all his life rather
than two years. I would think those 64th-note turns and the chromatic runs
in the Kegelstatt would be fiendish with all the cross-fingerings, but he
ripped them off most gracefully. Some minor fumbles later on seemed
understandable considering this is a new fingering system for him. I don't
mean to focus on the details. What was delightful was the way he used the
sound to give a sort of warm, intimate personality to the clarinet part.

Then I ran off to sing in a choir, a dress rehearsal for the Oregon Mozart
Players' "Happy Birthday, Mozart" concert tomorrow, in which the choir has
a small part. Also on the program is David Krakauer playing K.622 (not on
basset clt), so after the choir was done I got to creep into the empty hall
to hear that run-through. After enjoying the tiny room in the afternoon, I
wished for something smaller than our 2500-seat concert hall for the
concerto, but it was still a great experience. Krakauer played with a wide
variety of articulation and tone-color in the service of the music, and of
course impressive facility. He added a little bit of improvised variation
(extra scalar material as well as ornaments), and I think Dan would have
been pleased with the eingaenge: one very modest, and the one in the slow
movement a little more elaborate but still in one breath with a deliciously
extended held note going back to the theme.

--Doug Sears

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