Klarinet Archive - Posting 000184.txt from 2007/02

From: "Floyd Williams" <f.williams@-----.au>
Subj: [kl] RE: leopold wlach
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 03:17:46 -0500

The Leopold Wlach recording of the Mozart Concerto(with the bassoon concerto
played by ohlberger ) is available on Westminster( MCA) mvcw 19009.

Floyd Williams
Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University
Brisbane, Australia

-----Original Message-----
From: tony.pay@-----.com]
Sent: Thursday, 22 February 2007 8:39 AM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: Re: [kl] Reginald Kell

On 2/21/07, dnleeson <dnleeson@-----.net> wrote:

> Tony is a very lucky man to have had the privilege of studying
> with that man.

I never studied with Kell -- I'm sorry if I gave that impression. I
met him once, when I was about 10, and heard him give a talk about
playing and about the B&H clarinets that he was then endorsing. My
experience of his playing was derived solely from his 78rpm recording
of the Mozart concerto last movement.

I subsequently listened to, and played along with, Leopold Wlach --
though that's a lost world now. I should perhaps try to get hold of
that recording, which had a wonderful performance of the Bassoon
concerto on the other side, played by Klaus Ohlberger as I recall.

I should say as a preliminary to my promise of writing a review of the
Complete American Recordings that my reaction Kell's performances is
by no means totally positive. (Again, I see that what I wrote might
have been read in that way, for which I apologise again.) It may be a
curse of professionalism, but I tend to see the recorded performances
of all clarinet players, including my own, as falling short of what is
required by the music. Kell's approach is more successful in some
sorts of music than it is in others, and I've found it instructive in
my investigation of the discs so far to try to explain to myself
precisely how.

So, anyone who finds that they want to make a blanket endorsement of
the recordings will probably not turn out to agree with me.

It's worth laying one myth to rest -- at least, unless someone has
further hard information to offer. Stravinsky is sometimes said to
have thought this recording of the Three Pieces 'the best he had ever
heard'.

In the liner notes of 'the complete american decca recordings' Norman
C Nelson writes:

"Kell had played [the Three Pieces] in a 1934 concert in which
Stravinsky participated. Kell said "he had never felt such a fool" as
when he performed them before the composer on that occasion. This
apprehension, however, proved unfounded. Stravinsky told Kell that he
had never heard them better played and Kell's score bears Stravinsky's
handwritten commendation from that concert."

(The commendation reads, 'A l'excellent musicien Reginald
Kell...souvenirs bien sympathiques de Igor Stravinsky...London 27 II
34.')

It would be interesting to discover the source of Norman Nelson's
report of Stravinsky's opinion. (Notice that wherever it came from, it
was not an opinion of the RECORDING, which was made 17 years later in
New York. Even someone like Kell might have thought twice about
playing different notes in the presence of the composer of the piece,
particularly the presence of a composer like Stravinsky.)

What intrigues me is that as far as I know, no-one who has listened to
it and commented here or on the Bulletin Board has hitherto mentioned
what I find the most surprising thing about it: namely that Kell not
only plays all three pieces on the Bb -- I suppose Stravinsky does
say, 'PREFERABLY' Clarinet in A -- but that he goes on to TRANSPOSE
the first up an additional semitone. I find it hard to think that
Stravinsky would have approved of that.

I'd also be surprised to find that he approved of Kell's response to
his compression of phrase 1 to yield phrase 2 in the beginning of the
second piece -- a compositional technique that occurs several times in
the work, for example in the first 5 bars of the first movement. In
the second piece Kell 'corrects' this compression by adding an extra D
of his own, as well as making other changes of notes in both second
and third movements..

Tony

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