Klarinet Archive - Posting 000218.txt from 2007/05

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] R. Kell revisited
Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 10:12:22 -0400

Part 2.1
I've had a couple of private inquiries about my previous message, from
people using editions of the Mozart Trio, K. 498 with the bars numbered
from 1 at the beginning of each movement. My copy of the Adamowski edition
was published without bar numbers. I numbered the whole thing
consecutively, which was probably a bad idea. Here is a repetition of my
previous message with the bars numbered from the beginning of each
movement, so that I-20 is the 20th bar of the first movement, II-20 is the
20th bar of the second movement, etc. with the consecutive numbers I used
in the previous message in parentheses for bars after the first movement.

-----------

Kell's tone sounds better to me, less shrill, more resonant and more
compatible with the fellow musicians' tones, in the Mozart Trio in E-flat,
K. 498, with pianist Mieczslaw Horsowski and violist Lillian Fuchs (1950,
again from Decca LP DL 9543). This piece is recorded as a real trio, not
as clarinet with accompaniment. The amount of vibrato Kell uses in Mozart
sounds reasonable to me. He uses Bb clarinet and has a few intonation
problems, particularly on sustained notes above the staff, for instance at
bar I-38-40, I-72-3, I-101-3, etc..

I don't hear those problems on the same notes in the Allegretto, but that's
where Fuchs sounds a little sloppy, most noticible after IV-67 (353) in
both repeats. Kell's drowned out at bar I-37-38. I hear something odd at
the beginning of bar I-85, where Kell holds his note as long as Fuchs holds
hers. They're in 6/8 and in my score, his note is an eighth note and hers
is a full bar. Maybe there's something wrong with the score I'm using, the
1967 reprint Schirmer edition (the one with the misprint in the viola part
9 bars after Q, i.e. bar II-111 [280], edited by Adamowski in 1920. If
Kell is right and this edition is wrong, I'd like to correct my copy.
Should the clarinet hold that note at I-85?

All of the musicians start their trills unprepared on the principal note,
most exposed in the piano at bar IV-50 (336) and in the clarinet at bar
I-112, where Kell's trill drops down to g at the top of the staff from c
above the staff. There is no appoggiatura in the Adamowski score for
either of those examples (among others). Is the score in error? My piano
teacher, Artur Eisler, taught me that, in the absence of any other written
ornamentation, I should always prepare trills from above for Mozart and all
earlier earlier composers. According to Grove's, Hummel, who as a child
studied with Mozart for about two years, was the first to argue in favor of
sometimes beginning the trill unprepared on the principal instead of
preparing it from the auxilliary note a half or whole step above, and
Hummel states explicitly that *all* of his prececessors, presumably
including Mozart, began their trills from above if no appoggiatura or other
figure indicated otherwise.

Some of Kell's phrasing gets a bit extreme for my taste--at IV-93-94 (379
and 380), for instance, when he flips up to the eighth notes above the
staff, they're almost inaudible. Aside from the things I've already
mentioned, in a few places, Horsowski skips an acciaccatura (IV-160 [446],
for instance, though he plays the one at IV-137 [423]) and there was one
place near the end of the Allegretto where he may have skipped an
appoggiatura (although I forgot to go back and check and can't do it now
because I'm being held down by a certain cat who's had enough outrage for
one day). Those might represent tiny finger-slips (Horsowski is
phenomenally accurate) or differences of opinion with the score, not
differences between editions. Except as noted, the musicians follow the
Adamowski score so closely, even including the phrase markings, that I
suspect it's the score they used.

Lelia Loban
"Mozart should have composed 'Faust.'"
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Conversations with Eckermann," 1827

Lelia Loban

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