Klarinet Archive - Posting 000055.txt from 2008/05

From: Alexander Brash <brash@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Why not a tone like a slippery eel?
Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 13:40:40 -0400

The comparison of late Brahms with autumnal glow is new and original
- an exciting metaphor I'm glad this writer has stumbled on for
definitely the first time ever.
(sarcasm)

On May 10, 2008, at 1:32 PM, Lelia Loban wrote:

> 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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>

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