Klarinet Archive - Posting 000043.txt from 2007/06

From: "Ronald Coleman" <ron.coleman@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Reginald Kell: Part 9, Brahms Trio, Op. 114
Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:00:46 -0400

I first performed this piece because I especially liked the instrumentation
- particularly in the Adagio. But after a couple of performances the rest of
the movements grow on you - at least that was my experience. Finding both a
cellist and a pianist who can do it justice is a trick ... But the end
result is worth the effort. Great piece!

ron.coleman@-----.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Lelia Loban [mailto:lelialoban@-----.net]
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2007 2:25 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: [kl] Reginald Kell: Part 9, Brahms Trio, Op. 114

Brahms Trio in A minor, Op. 114, with cellist Frank Miller and pianist
Mieczslaw Horsowski (recorded 1950, issued on Decca LP DL 9732 / 7524).
I Allegro
II Adagio
III Andantino grazioso
IV Allegro

This Trio intrigues me. I enjoy listening to it, even though I think Brahms
wrote better music for the clarinet in the Op. 115 Quintet and the Op. 120
sonatas. Kell uses clarinet in A and plays with a mellow, typically
classical tone in most of the Trio. The recording sounds better-balanced
between the three musicians than some of the other pieces in the 6-disk
Decca set, though marred by the engineering problem (inherited from the
original 1950 recording) of electronic static in the fortes.

Throughout, I like Kell's vibrato. Most of the time, instead of buzzing
around with the show of nonchalance and the slangy phrasing he sometimes
displays elsewhere, Kell plays with sensitivity and the right amount of
gravitas for my taste. That's no easy accomplishment in this piece. The
second and third movements, in particular, must be difficult to play without
lapsing into corniness or outright parody, while the final movement just
suddenly--stops. What a strange piece--instantly recognizable as Brahms,
but Brahms in a quirky frame of mind. Am I nuts to suspect that Brahms is
having some fun with his listeners here?

I Allegro
In the first two movements, where the piano accompanies a call-and-response
duet between the cello and piano, Miller and Kell balance well. True, I
could do with less of Miller's vintage 1950 portamento and less of Kell's
odd habit of adding staccato where none is written--though that quirk
bothers me less in this score than in others--see below.

Bars I-4 and 5: It sounds to me as if Kell comes in a quarter note late,
starting his throat g on the first note of bar 5, instead of with the
score's quarter note tied at the end of bar 4 into the beginning of bar 5.
If he does come in for bar 4, he's too quiet. That note should audibly
harmonize with the E in the piano and cello at the end of bar 4.

I-25: Kell shortens the b-flat considerably and omits the slur between the
b-flat and the a. The more marcato phrasing doesn't sound bad, and he's got
a forte marking at I-24--but I think his big crescendo in I-24, followed by
this dramatic tonguing in I-25, go too far this early in the piece, where
Brahms is sneaking up on the listener. Better to keep things a little more
low-key there, save some of that drama for bar I-28 and then go boiling up
those runs in I-32-33 to the double-forte. As played here, the double-forte
isn't an anticlimax by any means, but it does lose some of its buildup and
intended impact, coming after the exaggeration of I-25.

Bars I-40-41, for example: Kell cuts off the second notes in the pairs of
quarter notes so that they sound like the quarter note - eighth note pairs
in bars 35-36. In the many other quarter-note pairs in this movement, he
tends to do the same, again and again: a crescendo on the first note, a big
decrescendo on the second note and quite a lot of air after the second note.
He overdoes this phrasing for my taste. (The electronic static in my copy
of the recording first becomes noticible around these bars.)

Bar I-58: This is what I mean about Miller's portamento. Sounds dated
today to slide into the pitch this much.

Bar I-86: Here's a particularly fine example of Kell's exaggerated DAH-yip,
DAH-yip phrasing on the quarter note pairs, where he cuts the second quarter
note to an 8th or less. There's no staccato marking on those notes he cuts
short.

Bar I-91: now he's got a staccato marking, on the e-natural quarter note
above the staff, but he's already reduced its importance to just one of many
in a series, instead of letting the phrase build up to this drama.
I'm not going to specify the rest of the similar phrase groups, which he
exaggerates consistently throughout.

Bar I-100-104, phrasing aside, the unison between chalumeau clarinet and
cello sounds excellent here.

Bar I-106 and following, these back-and-forth runs between cello and
clarinet, with the piano joining in at I-119, must be nearly impossible to
play without reminding the listener of technical exercises. This passage
was where I first started to suspect that Brahms wrote this piece with a
smirk on his face. After all, he wrote Op. 114 purely by choice, not
because he was desperate for a commission but because he'd met a splendid,
likeable clarinet player and wanted to write for him; and Brahms wrote this
Trio near the end of a career replete with masterpieces. If he didn't want
these runs to sound this way, then they wouldn't sound this way.

Bar I-135, intonation not in sync, a nitpick only worth mentioning to point
out its rarity here: usually, the cello and clarinet do match up their pitch
extremely well with each other and with the piano.

Bar I-165, Kell's entrance is nearly inaudible. Cello shouldn't drown him
out here.

Bar I-221-223, am I imagining things, or is Horsowski's right hand in the
treble playing along with Kell, very faintly, in those runs?

II Adagio
This movement is easy to turn into a sentimentalized parody of itself, a
temptation I think this trio barely avoids by erring (if it is erring) on
the side of deft, deliberate humor. My first thought was that I'd prefer a
slightly more restrained interpretation, but I changed my mind after I began
hearing an appropriate wink and nudge in this reading. The oddness, the
dangerously over-the-top writing is there, by Brahms, in the score, and
Kell, Miller and Horsowski might as well play with it. In fact, they
exaggerate phrasing less here than they do in the more
straightforwardly-written first movement--fortunately, because this second
movement is so far out there already that exaggerating it much would make it
ridiculous, and I don't think outright burlesque is what Brahms wants.
But, imagine a rehearsal scene in a dark comedy play, with the clarinetist
as the charming lecher. The pianist, of course, is the cellist's spouse,
listening closely, suspicions roused somewhat too late....
>;-)

Bar II-10: Technical question from an amateur. What's the correct reading
of these markings? I've been interpreting the slur that crosses a rest
between two notes marked staccato to mean that these notes should be short
and well-separated, but tongued only very gently--perhaps rendered staccato
by simply by cutting off the air and leaving the notes "open" at the ends
instead of closing each one off with the tongue. The slur is missing in
clarinet II-10 of the 1892 Simrock first edition, by the way, although it's
there in the cello at II-10 and in both cello and clarinet at II-11 in
Simrock 1892. The slur for clarinet in II-10 first appears in later
editions.

II-35-36, where Kell has a sustained forte altissimo f, II-40 where Kell has
forte f and a-flat below the staff, and elsewhere on forte notes way up
there or way down there, Kell's tone sometimes deteriorates into honking.
His tone sounds fine on those notes when he's not playing forte.

II-49, in the cello, I could be mistaken, but it sounds to me as if, instead
of arpeggiating pizzicato triple-stops as marked, Miller plays pizzicato
double stops (leaving out the lowest note).

III Andante grazioso
This movement, though full of charm, lots of charm, so much charm I'm
suspicious of it, also comes close to the edge where the performers have to
decide whether to go ahead and fall off into mawkishness or caper on the
verge and make entertainment of teetering on the brink like high-wire
artists. I can't help hearing the lilting waltz that begins and ends the
movement as the ideal soundtrack for a Tim Burton movie scene, set in a
lush, Victorian ballroom full of elegantly-clad socialites (but don't look
too closely at the tattered lace and rotting silk), all dancing gaily (if
stiffly, with the occasional lurch and stagger) and flirting with each
other--and all of them slightly transparent, with strangely gray skin....

Bar III-57, Kell and Miller both clip off the ends of their final quarter
notes in these phrases, but in this movie, oops, I mean movement, I'm
finding it so inconvenient to try to maintain the status of Very Serious
Listener that I'm enjoying these phrases now, hearing them as *intentional*
humor, from Brahms and also from these performers.

Bar III-113-169, I don't know what anyone (other than Tim Burton in search
of a soundtrack...) could do with this odd little excursion into beer hall
dance, other than what Kell, Horsowski and Miller do, which is to play it
straight and very skillfully and hope that anyone who laughs assumes the
humor is deliberate. And why shouldn't it be deliberate?

Bar III-205 (1 bar before end of movement), Kell and Miller hold their
quarter note halfway through their rests. Sounds fine but not what's
written.

IV, Allegro
I had to keep the sound turned down lower than I'd have preferred in this
movement, because the recording has electronic static throughout. Sounds as
if the engineer wasn't paying enough attention to the levels.

Bar IV-136-145, I love this melody in the cello. I wish Brahms had spent
more time developing this theme, though perhaps in a different score.

Bar IV-146, when Kell comes in, that element of parody sneaks in with him,
because he exaggerates the phrases slightly beyond the way Miller plays
them. Such a small difference--but what a difference.

Bar IV-189 to the end, what an odd, abrupt ending to the movement and to the
Trio, as if Brahms got tired of writing and simply stopped--or pretended he
got tired of writing and simply stopped.

Though I can't read Brahms's mind, I come away with the impression that
nearly everything that strikes me as peculiar about this piece is in the
score, put there on purpose by Brahms, not a fault in the performance. One
reason why I think I'm right is because, in other recordings in this set,
I'm perfectly happy to blame Kell for exaggerated phrasing. If I'm not
blaming him here, and if I'm enjoying the same things that bug me elsewhere,
then there's got to be a reason. (Of course, the reason may be:
because I'm wrong!) Anyway, I'd love to know what Horsowski, Miller and Kell
thought about this piece when they recorded it.

I have some more comments about specific notes and phrasings in this
recording, but delayed sending this message long enough already (and it's
long enough, already!) because I got interested in comparing editions of the
Brahms clarinet pieces. Right now, I'll say only that the edition I
compared with this performance is a reprint of the edition that I'm pretty
sure the trio used. Haven't finished the research yet.

Lelia Loban
"The metronome has no value . . . for I myself have never believed that my
blood and a mechanical instrument go well together."
--Johannes Brahms, letter to George Henschel, 1880, quoted in the Wordsworth
Dictionary of Musical Quotations.

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