Klarinet Archive - Posting 000173.txt from 2011/01

From: <kathleenwilliams76@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Reger, Rheinberger and Busoni organ works
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:15:09 -0500

Learned friends

Thankyou for your messages of support. I will brave the list once more. I am a very sensitive soul, with a tenuous grasp on sanity at the best of times, but I believe that sensitivity is what enables me to listen to and play music with a childlike sense of wonder and joy.

Harking back to my undergraduate days, my esteemed teacher Floyd Williams encouraged me to listen to other works by composers in order to better understand their clarinet works. In this case, it was Schumann and Dietchterliebe. What a wonderful piece of music that turned out to be, and my favourite recording of it is Fischer-Dieskau. Just recently, feeling jaded in general by music, a Facebook friend posted a YouTube video of Mr Dieskau, which ignited the dying embers of my appreciation of music into a full on raging bushfire. And to have the joy of working with a soprano on the Schubert Romanze and Shepherd on the Rock knew no bounds.

In a similar vein, recently I have performed pieces by Busoni and Reger. I know, don't get a lot of airplay, but an organist friend of mine highlighted for me that they were better known as organ composers. So I have been happily listening to their organ works, Sonatas, Organ Symphonies, transcriptions of Bach chorales. I do encourage anyone playing works by the above to listen to their organ works to gain a wider knowledge of what is going on in both the clarinet and piano parts. Ditto Rheinberger. And if you like your Wagner Chromaticism on steriods, Vierne is a gem. I believe he did write for clarinet as well.

Speaking for myself, this has opened up a new world of music for me, which can only help my wider understanding of music, French in the case of Vierne, though I haven't gotten to Widor and the wider French repertoire, which I have set myself to learn and present over the next year.

May I also express my joy at preparing the Milhaud Concerto. It is a real gem, and though quite difficult and exhausting is just as much fun as the better known Scaramouche, though I have a question regarding the tempos. The second movement is quite explicit at crotchet equals 120, no brainer there, but I'm not sure how fast to take the first movement. The last page of the first movement breaks into demi semis full of sharps. The fastest I have got it at the moment is quaver equals 152, which would make the dotted crotchet just over 50. There are some nasty sharps in the passages making like interesting as well.

Regards, Kathy
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