 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: joe englert
Date: 2021-08-03 09:35
I've always wondered, as great as Harold Wright was, I wonder why he didn't get a major orchestra job earlier...surely he auditioned for NY Phil...Drucker was younger than him...Philadelphia ..he should have taken over from his old teacher, there can be no comparison between him and the other two gentlemen who got the two previous mentioned jobs...I am assuming he never auditioned for those jobs? those are just two of many that had openings way before Boston did. Anyone shed some light?Cheers
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Author: kdk
Date: 2021-08-03 11:04
He did play principal in Dallas and then in the National Symphony prior to getting the Boston job in 1970. Not the "Big 5" of American orchestras in those years, but reputable orchestras, and I imagine, combined with the income and prestige of the Casals and Marlboro Festivals, he made as good a living as an orchestral musician could make in those pre-52-week-contract days.
Karl
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Author: joe englert
Date: 2021-08-03 19:06
For sure...but, I imagine he must have auditioned for new york in the early 60's ...that was a major step up from anything he was doing...guess Bernstein liked that nanny goat super technical clarinet playing better than refined class that Wright had
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Author: kdk
Date: 2021-08-03 19:51
As I remember reading about it, Drucker was hired as a section player - I think Ass't principal/Eb. Whether Bernstein expected McGinnis, the principal in 1960, to leave (or forced him to resign) and meant Drucker to be his replacement, I don't know. But auditions weren't what they are now, and Bernstein could have engineered that even if there were auditions. If the word was out that auditioning was a waste of time, a player with a steady, decently paid gig might have passed it up.
Orchestral playing was a different world in the late 1950s and very early 1960s. Salaries hadn't started burgeoning and seasons were in the 35-week range. The players all had extra jobs to make ends meet.
Karl
Post Edited (2021-08-03 20:36)
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Author: joe englert
Date: 2021-08-03 21:35
Thanks very much.. for sure...I have heard the same thing...as a matter of fact..I have heard from a very reliable source, that my ex-great teacher...Kalman Bloch, actually got his principal job in the LA Phil simply because of Simeon Bellison's reccomendation.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-08-04 01:26
Bonade's recommendations often carried the day. Marcellus probably got into Cleveland that way. But your characterization of Drucker is unfair. He was a remarkable sight reader, even playing in New York groups that read music from hand written manuscripts. His rhythm was rock solid, and he had the finger technique and articulation speed to play virtually anything. He was a quick study from an early age. Still a teenager, he beat Marcellus in an audition for Curtis. How many other players could have done that? Drucker's performance on Eb clarinet with New York established him as a superb orchestral musician --just right for THAT orchestra. Bernstein picked him for principal because he knew Drucker could be heard easily in that rambunctious New York group. No one ever said that they couldn't hear Drucker! Wright was a perfect fit for the Boston Symphony but he probably would have been lost in the fireworks display of the New York Philharmonic. In a recorded interview, Wright mentions more than once that Boston, unlike New York, was a quiet orchestra with excellent dynamic control. In retrospect, he may have been glad that he wound up in Boston rather than New York.
Stanley Drucker was an amazing player by any standard. His Nielsen was a watershed performance marked by powerful rhythmic drive and fearless surmounting of technical difficulties but also a silken smooth legato over the widest intervals. His career as principal clarinetist in a major orchestra is unmatched for longevity. If he were just a "nanny goat vibrato" player, he would not have survived that many years under that many conductors, including Pierre Boulez. Given the opportunity to record the Nielsen Drucker plunged in and did it in one take, just after he had travelled though freezing weather. No doubt Harold Wright would have explored the Nielsen in more subtle. sophisticated ways, but he never recorded it, and I'm not sure he ever performed it in public (though John Yeh says Wright was a wonderful tutor in helping him play the Nielsen.) There you have the difference. Drucker was a "damn the torpedos full speed ahead" player; Wright was more meditative and poetic. Both found matching orchestras to play in. So what's to complain about?
Post Edited (2021-08-04 01:37)
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2021-08-04 01:59
Hi seabreeze. If this forum had a "Like" button I'd click it for your post above.
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Author: rmk54
Date: 2021-08-04 03:12
Wright was a perfect fit for the Boston Symphony but he probably would have been lost in the fireworks display of the New York Philharmonic.
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I attended the first Carnegie Hall concert Wright played with the BSO, probably in 1970 0r 71. I remember they performed Beethoven 6, and even though I was sitting in the front row, I had trouble hearing him.
That's not to say he wasn't a great player (he most certainly was, and he had a profound influence on me) but I agree with seabreeze that the NYP would have eaten him alive.
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Author: joe englert
Date: 2021-08-04 04:16
not complaining really,, just wondering..I had no idea that drucker beat out marcellus for curtis? verrry interesting....I think you may agree with me however, playing like Drucker's is pretty easily matched and in fact surpassed with each new generation...I'ts really just technical and each new generation seems to get more technically poficient to where we have some 14 year olds hammering away at the Nielsen as fast or faster than Drucker ever did...and yet...there had been no clarinetist to come along with the tone, musicalilty that Wright had...maybe that is why today, all the clarinetistes talk about trying to copy wright's sound or how they wish they could play like him...not so with Drucker...thinking about it however, you are probably right about Wright with Bernstein...Mr Flamboyant conductor...and a loud orchestra
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Author: joe englert
Date: 2021-08-04 04:18
haha...never thought of it...or just MAYBE, Wright could have transformed that loud bombastic Bernstein thing into more a subtle musical group...like he did with Boston...
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-08-04 05:03
I've never heard a 14-yr old play the Nielsen as well as Drucker did in his performances with Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, His performance is not just fast, it's compelling and pays great attention to the line and development. A couple of years ago I heard Julian Bliss play the Nielsen live to a standing ovation. The performance was about the same tempo as Drucker's and the execution was perfect. But even in Bliss, the rhythmic drive and sheer excitement in Drucker's rendition just wasn't there. Sabine Meyer gives a very polished beautiful performance, about the same pace but more relaxed. The solo stars of the clarinet world are not playing it faster. Frost plays it about the same pace but I don't hear the same drama in his performance as in Drucker's either. Drucker did not play as mechanically as you suggest.
As for players wanting to sound like Wright or McLane, you hear that kind of talk from old fogies like me, not from the 14-yr old whiz kids. A few years ago, they wanted to sound like Jon Manasse; then they were buying fat boy barrels and playing mouthpieces with thick rails and open facings--nothing like Wright. Now I hear Andy Ottensamer as their ideal, but that also will soon pass. Time consumes all; time conquers all. The sounds of both Wright and Drucker are functions of time and will pass into oblivion with everything else. Some new sounds will arise and be copied. Samuel Johnston said you can't freeze the meaning of English words forever into one dictionary definition; it is their nature to change. And so with the sound of the clarinet; it will always be changing. I'm starting to like the sound of Patrick Morgan's clarinet--quite distinct from Drucker, Wright, Manasee, and Ottensamer.
For a more just estimate of Stanley Drucker, I recommend Mitchell Estrin's biography "Stanley Drucker, Clarinet Master."
Post Edited (2021-08-04 07:25)
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-08-04 05:45
David,
I've always thought of Lorin (who played side by side with Michelle Zukofsky in the Los Angeles Philharmonic) as the "West Coast Drucker" because of his technical prowess. So sorry that Lorin died at a relatively young age. But I wasn't talking about how Drucker played the Nielsen at age 14 but how he played it, in full maturity, in the 1960s with Bernstein, and I think that is more compelling and polished than Lorin's admittedly brilliant achievement at 13. Lorin's son sent me a batch of his father's recorded work, and all of them including Ginastera's Variationes are great.
Post Edited (2021-08-04 07:26)
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Author: joe englert
Date: 2021-08-04 08:04
for sure, I heard that and thought it was awsome...HOWEVER....his premiere rhapsody sounded like a high schooler would...which is still great considering he was younger than that
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