Klarinet Archive - Posting 000165.txt from 2007/05

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] R. Kell revisited
Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 06:47:49 -0400

On 21 May, "Kevin Fay" <kevin.fay.home@-----.net> wrote:

> Kell's Debussy is stunning. (As in good). I will steal ideas from it.

You could even get your pianist to follow the recording and to play the wrong
chord, twice, in bars 6 and 7. I find it extraordinary that this mistake,
ruining one of the most beautiful ideas in the piece, went unnoticed
(presumably) by both players and by the record producer. A deep
understanding of the music, indeed.

> Kell's Stravinsky Three Pieces struck me as . . . bizarre, though. Someone
> posted that Igor was a big fan of this recording? (The same Igor
> Stravinsky who carefully made all those tempo markings and insisted on
> strict adherence to them?) The second movement in particular is so much s
> l o w e r than marked that I can't help but wonder if Stravinsky was
> merely being polite. Let's just say I've never heard it played quite like
> that before (or since).

I haven't seen any evidence that Stravinsky even heard the recording. I
wrote a bit about that on the Bulletin Board:

http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=237009&t=236814&v=t

> I do not like it. It strikes me as more of Kell's ego insertion than a
> fair reading of what the composer wrote; too far afield from what's on the
> page to be a credible performance.

I agree with you. BTW, I'll get around to saying more about these recordings
at some point.

Tony
--

_________ Tony Pay
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... Experience: What you get when you don't get what you want

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