Klarinet Archive - Posting 000227.txt from 2007/02

From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Kell
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 12:56:10 -0500

I've only become aware of the boxed set through this discussion and I've
ordered it, so I look forward to some interesting listening once it arrives.
One passage from a Kell recording has lasted in my memory literally for
decades. It was one of the reasons why as a young player I tended to dismiss
Kell's approach to phrasing as "idiosyncratic," which I understood to mean
personally expressive in ways not necessarily related to overall musical
context. The piece was the Hindemith Sonata. In the last movement - Kleines
Rondo - the opening figure of the first theme - beginning with quarter-two
eighths - is one of the main bits of the movement. It's been years since
I've listened to the recording so I don't know if in my youthful snobbery I
overreacted to it, but Kell seemed almost to dot the quarter and play two
sixteenths. I don't know that it was that precise, but the eighths were
certainly much later than the notation required. To me this went well beyond
"rubato" to distortion, especially against the accompaniment which is very
straight and square for the first four bars, and he did it consistently
throughout the movement. I have a recollection, too, of the same kind of
rhythmic distortion in the second movement. Some of the same kinds of
phrasing applied to the first movement, which is more lyrical, and certainly
of the third movement seemed appropriate and more expressive than distorted,
but the treatment of that particular passage seemed completely tasteless,
especially against the piano part. I have to confess that, if my memory is
accurate, that treatment hasn't improved in my estimation, although I've
come to appreciate a great deal of the expressive gestures in some other
Kell recordings - the Mozart Quintet in particular - that I've listened to
more recently.

I'm looking forward to hearing the recordings in the American set. I've
always admired the control Kell had, a feeling that I don't always get from
other recording artists, that whatever he played, he meant it. Whatever
quarrel I may have had with how a passage came out, I knew my discomfort was
with his intent and not with his technical inability to pull it off.

Karl

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony Pay [mailto:tony.p@-----.org]
> Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2007 11:49 AM
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: Re: [kl] Kell
>
> I wrote:
>
> > None of it was tied down to anything specific.
>
> I except Dan Leeson's remarks about Kell's rubato.
>
> But even that needs to be more specific, as Dan and I have discussed
> previously; see:
>
> http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2001/02/001055.txt
>
> Playing rubato 'just in general' does nothing. Mozart said (letter to
> Leopold Mozart, 24 October 1777) that "..in tempo rubato in an Adagio, the
> left hand should go on playing in strict time." But this says nothing
> about
> what Mozart used his rubato FOR. Kell's sort of rubato isn't in an
> Adagio,
> and for my money mostly has precisely the effects you DON'T want.
>
> 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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