Klarinet Archive - Posting 000138.txt from 2006/09

From: "Kevin Fay" <kevin.fay.home@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] "best" concerto
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:45:47 -0400

Sean Osborn posted:

<<<Well, when I say I think something is better than something else, it's my
assessment only of what I think makes music better. . . .

* * *
It is in this way that I think Nielsen is the best concerto: because it
communicates so directly, effectively, and emotionally a huge range of
feelings. It takes you on a vast emotional roller-coaster, with no filler,
in a way that I can't even imagine being better. I have to say that I like
the tunes of his Flute Concerto better - they're more pleasing to the ear
than "Do-wop Doooo, Do-wop Dooo" from the Cl. Con., but our concerto is
much more emotional.>>>

This is an interesting thread - "best" v. "favorite." Saying something is
your "favorite" is rather easy; I too find Copland's 3rd my "favorite"
symphony, but would have to pick one by Mahler for "best."

. . . but what of "best"? Is it just our opinion of what we *should* like
best? Or an attempt to evaluate composition that's simply well done? Hard
to say.

I recall visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art (or was it MOMA?) in NYC
with my wife. I'm not one for visual art - perhaps the bad eyesight. My
wife, OTOH, oohed and aahed all day.

Quite pooped, I sat down in a room with but one work in it: Monet's Water
Lilies. After a few minutes, I had an epiphany - while not much of a judge
of painting, even I could tell that this one was really, really good.

A side question. Are *any* clarinet concertos particularly good? The
Mozart is a great clarinet concerto, but I don't think it's one of Mozart's
"best" - not like the piano concerto No. 23, for example. Do any clarinet
concertos stack up against the Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Sibelius violin
concertos? Dvorak for cello? Harold in Italy?

kjf

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