Klarinet Archive - Posting 000054.txt from 2008/05

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Why not a tone like a slippery eel?
Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 13:32:20 -0400

You think we've already got problems figuring out what "warm, dark tone"
means? Here's The Washington Post's current idea of an appropriate review:

>It's a rare treat to hear Brahms's Clarinet Quintet
>and Piano Quintet in the same evening. But on
>Wednesday the Embassy Series brought an
>ensemble of local musicians to the German
>Embassy to perform these pinnacles of the
>chamber music repertoire.
[snip]
>The Clarinet Quintet (played first on the program)
>is characteristic of the composer's later years--
>suffused with nostalgia, melancholy and autumnal
>glow, its underlying heartache left unresolved in
>concluding bars that die away with a sigh. [snip]
>Clarinetist Suzanne M. Gekker, though overemphatic
>in some of her phrasing, caressed Brahms's writing
>with a tone that was like a ribbon of caramel.
>
--Joe Banno, "Embassy Series: Brahms Quintets," The Washington Post, Friday,
May 9, 2008, Style section, p. C11. The full review is available online at
http://www.washingtonpost.com

Gosh, that caramel must have made an awful mess of the sheet music, not to
mention the clarinet. Didn't the pads stick? What sort of reed should I
use--and what swab should I buy for cleaning out the instrument later--if I
aspire to caress Brahms's pinnacle with that caramel tone? (Come to think
of it, I'm not so sure Brahms would want me to go caressing his pinnacle.)
I wonder, too, what caramel with an autumnal glow sounds like, and why a
concert in May didn't caress with springtime caramel instead? I've never
heard a ribbon of caramel sigh, either. Must've been an amazing concert.

Lelia Loban
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/Lelia_Loban

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