Klarinet Archive - Posting 000218.txt from 2007/02

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Kell
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 10:46:01 -0500

On 24 Feb, ACHESON ARTHUR <arthur.acheson@-----.com> wrote:

> While at college in 1957 our prof of music, who claimed to have
> perfect pitch, said the Kell version of the Mozart concerto was
> recorded on a Bb instrument and it therefore pained him to have to
> listen to it! I think the recording was issued in GB on Brunswick.

I'd never heard this -- but as a boy, I did play along with one side of a
78rpm Kell recording on a Bb clarinet. I wrote here about it a few years
ago, see:

http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/1999/05/000603.txt

I always thought it must have been because our gramophone had an adjustable
speed control. But perhaps not. Can someone help with further information?

> I have seen no mention of this in any of the correspondence and I wonder if
> it might have any relevance to the pitch of the Stravinsky referred to
> elsewhere. Could the recording equipment have been questionable?

No, I don't think so, Arthur. You can hear quite clearly that the opening
notes are Bb(gracenote)CAD..G (rather than A(gracenote)BG#C#..F# as written)
because of the timbres, and it's confirmed by other characteristic timbres
throughout. (There's no low E, for example.)

To a clarinet player, it's obvious that Kell played it in this key because he
thought it SOUNDED better -- and indeed, if you try it yourself, you will
probably agree with him that it does 'lie better' on the instrument.

The reasons why I wouldn't do that myself are rather complex, and are to do
with what I think I'm DOING when I play the clarinet in a piece like
Stravinsky's. I find that there is a contrast between my philosophy and
Kell's in this regard, and this contrast has a suggestive resonance with
other aspects of his playing, as well as with my reactions to those other
aspects.

That doesn't mean that I don't appreciate Kell's strengths, too; and of
course the above is only a preliminary suggestion -- the case remains to be
made in detail.

But part of the reason why I'm less bothered to write at length about the box
set, Joe, is that no-one here or on the Bulletin Board seems to be willing to
engage with this SORT of discussion. I posted about the Stravinsky
transposition on the Board a couple of weeks ago, and not one person owning
the recordings, and therefore in a position to make the same judgement as I
did -- namely, that the transposition was deliberate -- responded.

The only people who have responded at all, aside from those like you with
suggestions that the anomaly may lie in the recording technique, are those
with generalised laments about Kell's mistreatment as a great artist (he must
have been TRULY great, because Stanley Drucker said so on the telephone) or
axes to grind about their own mistreatment and how naff on the contrary Kell
is, and always was.

None of it was tied down to anything specific.

Tony
--

_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE
tel/fax 01865 553339
mobile +44(0)7790 532980 tony.p@-----.org

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