 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: kdk
Date: 2008-12-14 16:25
I heard a performance last night by a young conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and the Philadelphia Orchestra of the Tchaikovsky 6th Symphony. Once again, those 4 notes at the end of the 1st movement exposition were played by a bass clarinet instead of by a solo bassoon as specified by Tchaikovsky. I know this is an old question - probably no longer even qualifies as minor controversy - but does anyone know who originated this revision and whether or not there was any other reason than that conductors simply value the 6 'p's under the notes more than the fact that they appear in the bassoon staff? I'm always puzzled every time I hear it played this way. I imagine bassoonists hate playing it, so they aren't running up to conductors in protest. But Tchaikovsky knew about the bass clarinet - you don't need to go back any farther than a year earlier in St. Petersburg when Nutcracker was first performed - same city, so the instrument should not have been unavailable. If he could have had a bass clarinet and chose a bassoon anyway, why do conductors of major orchestras, as far as I can tell all over the world, insist on this substitution? I don't think I've ever heard a live performance using a bassoon. This tradition has even outlasted the use of horns instead of bassoons in the recapitulation of the first movement of Beethoven's 5th. Tchaikovsky must have known by 1893 how softly a bassoon could (or couldn't) play in that range, and pppppp is simply dramatic overkill for "as softly as possible." In fact, he, perhaps cleverly or not, only put ppppp - one less than the bassoon - under the preceding clarinet part.
I'd love to hear a real explanation other than the tongue-in-cheek ones I usually get from bassoonists. After all, having a bass clarinet sit on the stage through the whole exposition while the reed gets dry and the instrument gets cold (last night the 2nd clarinet player played the bass, so it had even more time to dry and chill than when a separate player is used) isn't exactly a guarantee of reliable control and precision, either.
Karl
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-12-14 18:02
There was a series on BBC (Discovering Tchaikovsky) where the 1st movement was scrutinised and later performed in full, and it has generally been accepted that the last four notes are best being played on bass clarinet rather than bassoon due to the nature of the tone quality.
They played it both ways (with bassoon and bass clarinet) to demonstrate the difference, and why the bass clarinet has gained preferrence by conductors to play these last four notes as the tone colour is a better match.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: William
Date: 2008-12-14 19:05
Our orchestra played it a few years ago and the bassoonist asked me to play the last four notes because they sound better on the bass clarinet and are easier to play (than for the bassoonist). Simple as that..............
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Author: kdk
Date: 2008-12-14 19:12
Well, I know the argument is very popular that it "sounds better" and that the bass clarinet's tone character is "better suited" to the situation. But this isn't the same issue as using a Bb clarinet to play C parts because the clarinetist doesn't own a C (actually, I do own and use one, but the argument is often made by other players) or playing the beginning of the Brahms 3rd on an A clarinet to avoid the nearly impossible change of instrument for the big solo statement of the second theme. And I haven't seen the BBC production so I don't know when it was recorded or what level of historic detail was included, so I can't comment on their conclusions. I'm curious, basically, about when the tradition began and who started it. (Was it another Stokowski innovation back in the early part of the 20th century when conductors routinely edited standard scores for any number of reasons?) Is the change as established a tradition in Europe as it is in the U.S.? Is there any major conductor who still uses (or has returned to) a bassoon?
I know "everyone" thinks it sounds better with a bass - for one thing it lets the principal clarinet show off how quietly he can play (not really so difficult on either a clarinet or a bass clarinet in that register). But in the end I keep coming back to the fact that, for better or for worse, Tchaikovsky clearly had the choice and made it - in favor of the bassoon. (Not to mention that, had he chosen a bass clarinet it would in all probability have been pitched in A like the two clarinets, not Bb.)
Did the bassoons in use in late 19th century Russia sound different from the ones in use in most "big" orchestras today? I know that "French" style bassoons are designed to produce a lighter sound than the German style instruments that are widely used in the American orchestras I mostly hear in live performance. Whether that would have made those four notes any easier to produce at pppppp is something a bassoonist would have to handle.
Is there any documentation to suggest that there might have been issues with the orchestra over hiring a third player just to play those 4 notes and the second player in question didn't have or play a bass? There certainly weren't union contracts involved in those days, but orchestral turf issues probably weren't invented in the 20th century.
The change has never been made to any edition that I've seen of the score or the parts. Is there an edition that even suggests it (i.e. cues the bassoon notes into the 2nd clarinet part) with some note of historical explanation?
What *is* the earliest recording of the symphony that uses a bass?
In my experience on the Klarinet list and elsewhere, the discussion usually ends with the kind of assertion you've said the BBC program makes. Last time we discussed it on Klarinet, as I remember, it ended abruptly when Tony Pay asked what major orchestras any of us had heard use a bass clarinet and I answered with a list of 4 or 5 recordings that I own by major orchestras - both American and European - as well as the live Philadelphia Orchestra performances I'd heard (under at the time 3 and now 4 different conductors) who do (did), maybe coming off sounding like a smart-aleck since I think the discussion suddenly ended at that point. I wish that discussion had continued because I'm really very curious about this and am very much hoping for some documentable historical perspective.
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-12-14 20:30
I wish I wish I wish that people would realise that authenticity is about musical style, not about the precise choice of instruments.
No sensible composer could possibly have cared which instrument was used to play this tiny handful of notes. Remember that today's instruments are quite a lot different from those of Tschaikovsky's day. More important, today's typical concert halls are a lot different. Even a venue like the Royal Albert Hall, which dates to Tschaikovsky's era, has had its acoustics quite dramatically modified.
What would have offended Tschaikovsky is not the change of instruments - which he himself would probably hardly have noticed - but the failure of orchestras to play his music in an authentic style.
As performers, our job is to serve our audience by playing the music Tschaikovsky wrote, in the style he intended. We shouldn't worry about the 1% of the audience who are wise guys who know that we are using the "wrong" instrument.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-12-14 23:12
I don't know if this the real answer to this question, but what I'm about to say seems like a plausible theory to me (certainly worth investigating, anyway). I recall reading that the bass clarinet was originally used in pit orchestras for ballets and operas (i.e., major production works) and only later became a regular member of the symphony orchestra.
And if you think about it a little, many of the composers most notable in bringing the bass clarinet into the limelight in the concert hall were likely writing music that they intended for an opera or ballet orchestra (or something akin to one) to play. Mahler was an opera conductor. Wagner wrote operas. Richard Strauss wrote and conducted operas (and was heavily influenced by Wagner, as well). Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was a ballet.
So I think that might explain why Tchaikovsky would have had no problem writing important bass clarinet parts in the Nutcracker but might be more hesitant to include a bass clarinet part in a symphony, even if it made musical sense to do so. Tchaikovsky might have thought it would be more practical not to use a bass clarinet in a symphony, because a symphony orchestra of his day (and especially in Tchaikovsky's younger days) might not necessarily have had one. If you want your music published and played, you write for an ensemble that you think will be able to play your music, right? I don't know if that's what Tchaikovsky was thinking at the time, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2008-12-14 23:21
Norbert,
What is the authentic style for Tchaikovsky?
KDK wrote:
"What *is* the earliest recording of the symphony that uses a bass?"
I have a Furtwangler recording which (off the top of my head) dates from the late 40s or early 50s with the Berlin Phil. That uses bass.
I may be interesting to note that Tchaikovsky was very proud of the 6th and conducted the first performance on the 16th Oct 1893 (he died later in October) but in his letters to family members all through the summer of that year he mentions several times the difficulties he was having with the orchestration. Perhaps Tchaikovsky himself changed it at the rehearsals hearing that the bassoon was not capable of matching the clarinet at that moment. Perhaps one of the other pieces in the programme had bass so that the player was avaliable.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2008-12-14 23:25
Mrm wrote:
"Tchaikovsky might have thought it would be more practical not to use a bass clarinet in a symphony, because a symphony orchestra of his day (and especially in Tchaikovsky's younger days) might not necessarily have had one. If you want your music published and played, you write for an ensemble that you think will be able to play your music..."
Not sure about that, just because there is quite a big bass part in his Manfred Symphony.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-12-14 23:30
kdk wrote:
>> Last time we discussed it on Klarinet, as I remember, it ended abruptly when Tony Pay asked what major orchestras any of us had heard use a bass clarinet and I answered with a list of 4 or 5 recordings that I own by major orchestras - both American and European - as well as the live Philadelphia Orchestra performances I'd heard (under at the time 3 and now 4 different conductors) who do (did), maybe coming off sounding like a smart-aleck since I think the discussion suddenly ended at that point. I wish that discussion had continued because I'm really very curious about this and am very much hoping for some documentable historical perspective.>>
I asked what major orchestras any of you had heard use a BASSOON, which is what I think you meant to say. I was surprised at your response of 4 or 5 recordings (I'd NEVER heard a bassoon used) and was waiting for someone else to say something. (I certainly didn't at all think you a smart-aleck, BTW -- and indeed I never do:-)
All I can say is that in all the orchestras I've played in, the second clarinet has brought a bass to play only those bars; plus, I don't know the answer to your question, sorry.
It does seem to me that I would find the bass clarinet to be superior in delivering that passage, and that that would win me over; but this is a personal and indeed somewhat arbitrary judgement, because I've never heard it played superlatively on the bassoon.
Tony
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Author: kdk
Date: 2008-12-14 23:43
Well, I'm not sure that it's only 1% who know the difference, nor that they are "wise guys" for knowing. In any case, that reasoning validates using horns in the recap of the first movement of Beethoven 5 (which originated, ostensibly, because some early 20th century conductors decided that Beethoven would have used horns instead except that his horn players somehow couldn't have played those notes on their natural horns) and other more whimsical substitutions, as long as they're still within an "authentic style." Why not just rewrite the violin parts in the last movement of the Tchaik 6 so that the whole melody is in the first violin part (American orchestras generally seat the violin sections next to, not across from, each other, destroying the effect, and in any case, how many listeners actually notice that the melody notes are split between the two parts from seats far away from the orchestra? It's of course, virtually impossible to tell on a recording, especially with "American" violin seating.)? Why not add clarinets to the Mozart "Jupiter" - he used them in the preceding two (depending on which version of the G minor you use) - to beef up the sound a little for our big halls and keep the clarinet section from getting the night off? That opening bassoon solo in Le Sacre du printemps would be much easier to play on any of several other instruments - we'd only notice because it's now become such a famous lick. The only thing in many, if not most cases of orchestration, that makes one choice of instrument color more stylistically authentic than another is that the composer actually chose one of them. Otherwise, we could easily change almost any orchestrational choice so long as we retain the texture, the clarity (or lack of it) with which the musical elements are heard by the audience and, of course, don't use instruments that weren't available to the composer.
It may well be that there is no more history to this than someone's decision, adopted by others until it became "standard," that the bassoonist can't play softly enough, especially in relation to the clarinet that precedes those four notes, to satisfy the pppppp direction and that, if Tchaikovsky had thought about it a little, he'd have made the same choice. In that case, I admit I'm beating a dead horse in trying to get to anything less arbitrary and more *documentably* "authentic." I meant more to ask if anyone knew anything of the origin of the practice than to rehash the arguments, which I've already heard, for why we still do it today. And I'm also interested to know if the substitution has become universal or if there are major orchestras anywhere who still use or have returned to using a bassoon.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-12-14 23:44
Wagner was using bass clarinets well before Tchaikovsky (some may even say he 'revealed' the bass clarinet as an orchestral tone colour) so bass clarinets were already established in large orchestras by the time Tchaikovsky came to writing. The most obvious example of Tchaikovsky's bass clarinet scoring being in 'Nutcracker' where it has several solo opportunities.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2008-12-14 23:45
Tony,
Were you involved in any of the projects when Roger Norrington (or possibly John Eliot Gardiner) explored Tchaikovsky's Symphonies? I don't remember exactly when but sometime in the 90s or possibly late 80s. Did they have anything to say on this particular subject?
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2008-12-14 23:48
I can't verify it but I've heard that it was Stokowski that first used the bass clarinet. He was known for changing instrumentations, adding or deleting instruments for what he considered better tone color. When you think about it, it really makes since to use the bass because of all the things mentioned above. He really should have written it for the bass clarinet as well as the opening bassoon solo but he didn't. Who really knows why? Maybe he actually thought that having a player sit there just to play those four notes did make sense and really wanted the bassoon in the opening statement. He could have written tutti parts for the bass clarinet though so we may never really know.
When we do it in Baltimore, it's just assumed that we would use the bass clarinet. The first time we did it when I came to the BSO in the early 60s we used the bassoon but after a few years conductors always requested the bass clarinet. Sometimes I play second and bass, sometimes I just play the bass notes and assist the first clarinet. It depends on who's conducting and the mood of the first clarinetist. We used to double the parts years ago so that made the decision even easier since I was sitting there anyway. ESP www.peabody.jhu.edu/457 Listen to a little Mozart, live performance.
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2008-12-15 03:25)
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Author: kdk
Date: 2008-12-15 01:22
Ed, I had thought of the possibility that Stoki had started it - he is said to have been responsible for several other things, including moving both sections of violins next to each other on the conductor's left (he later tried lots of other stage arrangements), doubling the wind parts (as you describe at Baltimore "years ago"), which was continued in Philadelphia by Ormandy throughout his entire tenure and only stopped when Muti became music director, and making (or commissioning) those huge arrangements of Bach organ music. But Stoki can't have been responsible for *every* innovation in orchestral playing. It's an intriguing possibility, but one I'd love to see documented.
Post Edited (2008-12-15 01:23)
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-12-15 02:53
Peter Cigleris wrote:
<<Mrm wrote:
"Tchaikovsky might have thought it would be more practical not to use a bass clarinet in a symphony, because a symphony orchestra of his day (and especially in Tchaikovsky's younger days) might not necessarily have had one. If you want your music published and played, you write for an ensemble that you think will be able to play your music..."
Not sure about that, just because there is quite a big bass part in his Manfred Symphony.>>
Well that's definitely an example of Tchaikovsky writing a non-opera, non-ballet piece with a bass clarinet in it, so in that sense, it's a counterexample to my hypothesis.
However, a counter-argument to that would be that the Manfred Symphony, while not being an opera or ballet, was written as a very large-scale programmatic work to be played by a very large orchestra (including an organ or harmonium, cornets in addition to trumpets, two harps, a very large string section, etc.--incidentally, the cornet is another instrument that shows up in Tchaikovsky ballets and other works, but not in any of the numbered symphonies). So, in a sense, you could argue that Manfred is more like an opera or ballet than a typical Tchaikovsky symphony in that because of its scale, you would necessarily have to bring in a number of musicians for that performance only (and not just in the clarinet section).
I'm not saying I'm right (I'm just hypothesizing, after all), but I don't feel I can rule my theory out, either.
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2008-12-15 02:57
This discussion reminds me of two stories. I don't recall all of the details of the first one, and perhaps someone can help me.
Frederick Fennell, the distinguished founder and conductor of the Eastman Wind Ensemble, was a champion of Ralph Vaughan Williams' band music. In particular, he regularly performed the well-known English Folk Song Suite, which if I'm not mistaken, was written early in Vaughan Williams' career. I think it's probably safe to say that Fennell spent endless hours studying and restudying this score, and he knew this music inside and out. One could possibly even claim that he knew the music better than Vaughan Williams did! After all of his study, Fennell was convinced that the ending of one of the movements would be more effective if a minor change was made (I don't recall what it was). In the 1950s, an elderly Vaughan Williams visited the U.S., and Fennell had a chance to meet with him. Fennell showed the score to the great composer, and explained the slight change he wanted to make. Vaughan Williams immediately understood Fennell's point, and told him to go ahead and make the change.
The second story is the familiar tale of the first rehearsal of Rhapsody in Blue. Although Gershwin didn't do the original orchestration, he must have had a particular idea in mind for the opening solo. At the rehearsal the clarinetist, Ross Gorman, completely on his own, put in the glissando that is the standard today. Gershwin hadn't thought about doing it this way, but he liked what he heard and the rest is history.
Tchaikovsky wrote a great symphony, and this very minor alteration helps to make a "problem" passage come off better. I really wonder if Tchaikovsky would have cared.
Heck, if we really care about following a composer's intentions 100%, let's right here and now advocate returning to the use of 2 ophicleides (or an ophicleide and a serpent) when performing the Symphonie Fantastique instead of using two tubas.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-12-15 09:01
clarinetguy wrote:
>> Heck, if we really care about following a composer's intentions 100%, let's right here and now advocate returning to the use of 2 ophicleides (or an ophicleide and a serpent) when performing the Symphonie Fantastique instead of using two tubas.>>
That we did, and do, in the OAE. (And indeed, last night here in Vienna, we played Le Roi Lear using an ophicleide:-)
Tony
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Author: kdk
Date: 2008-12-15 11:55
Well, I know you're being at least a little tongue-in-cheek about the ophicleide and the serpent, but it really isn't entirely the same thing. There is a (presumably) perfectly competent bassoonist sitting just a couple of seats away from the bass clarinetist with a (hopefully) perfectly serviceable bassoon, listening as the bass clarinet plays the notes that are in his part. You don't need to find either a nearly extinct instrument or a player who can make music on the beast.
BTW, the Philadelphia Orchestra has for at least the past couple of seasons used a cimbasso when called for instead of substituting a modern tuba. I'd never seen one before.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2008-12-15 13:32
You're right - I "mis-remembered" your question from two years ago, but checking back on a couple of the recordings I probably listed (I can't find either your post or my answer in the Klarinet archives, although I dug up some of the thread, so I'm not certain which recordings I mentioned) they do use bassoon. So at least I answered the right question and it's only my memory now that's faulty - I was a little afraid I'd misread your question back then.
In any case, these old recordings only show that there were a few major conductors (in terms of their recording exposure, at least), including one - Levine - who is still active, who used a bassoon into the middle of the 20th century.
I'm not sure why this has become such a focus of curiosity for me. I'm coming to the point of seeing that there is probably no real reason why substituting a bass clarinet has become a standard practice except that someone 50 or 60 years ago tried it and, because it turned out to be less problematic, it caught on. I don't even really mind it (and if I did, no one would much care). It's only that it seems to leave more or less open the possibility of second-guessing any instrumental choice (or, by extension, nearly any other compositional decision) based, not even on modern technical or mechanical developments, but on the perception that a different choice than the one the composer made works better.
It isn't quite the same, I don't think, as transposing from one clarinet to another to avoid using a cold instrument (Brahms 1st) or having to make a treacherous instrument change (Brahms 3rd) or to make a technically awkward passage easier to navigate (Hoedown from Copland's Rodeo) or because the right clarinet is for some reason not easily available (how often are Til or Sacre really played on D clarinets?). That topic has been pretty much exhausted over the years on Klarinet (and I don't mean to open up the debate here - just contrasting the situations), but most listeners - even clarinetists - wouldn't be certain which instrument they were hearing unless there were a clear tell-tale feature like a register change happening on the wrong note. The difference between a bassoon and a bass clarinet will be clear enough even to a relatively untrained listener (whether or not they really care which is used in this particular spot).
I assume from the experience you describe as a performer that bass is the standard in Europe and the U.K. as it seems to be here. At least having the second player bring the bass is efficient - in the performance I saw Eschenbach conduct here in Philadelphia the orchestra's bass clarinetist sat there for the entire piece before and after playing the four notes while the regular second clarinetist played the second part. Since they aren't paid per service for regular subscription concerts, I felt rather bad for the bass player, who, sitting there on stage, couldn't afford the luxury of closing his eyes and dozing off during the rest of the symphony. He couldn't even sneak a magazine onto his music stand, because the orchestra's hall has audience seating behind the stage.
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Author: graham
Date: 2008-12-15 15:47
I have an old LP of this with Sir Adrian Boult and one of the London Orchestras. It seems to date from the late 50s/early 60s and was a cheap record. The engineers limited the loud passages and boosted the soft passages so that the true decibel level hardly changes, and the result is a thin screechy distant tutti followed by a close warm blanket of sound in the quiet passages. You should hear as the clarinet decends getting "quieter" and the bass takes over: the sound gets bigger and closer until the hum of the supposedly pppp bass is positively enveloping you like a shroud of feedback. Now, that is surely what the composer was hoping for!
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Author: kdk
Date: 2008-12-15 16:37
No doubt - just imagine if it had been a bassoon!
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-12-15 17:00
kdk wrote:
"BTW, the Philadelphia Orchestra has for at least the past couple of seasons used a cimbasso when called for instead of substituting a modern tuba. I'd never seen one before."
The trouble with using cimbasso "when called for" is that, for much of the nineteenth century, the word "cimbasso" in a score meant "any large brass instrument that happens to be available". Only when we get to Verdi is it reasonable to assume that cimbasso means a large valve trombone.
It is, quite frankly, pointless using a modern cimbasso to play a nineteenth-century cimbasso part, unless you use authentic instruments on all the other brass parts as well. What do the Philadelphia Orchestra use for the trombone parts? Modern Bb/F trombones? These are radically different from the instruments Verdi would have expected. What do they use for the horn parts? Modern German-style double horns, I'd guess, invented only in the last decade of Verdi's life and therefore not authentic for nearly all his music.
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-12-15 17:09
kdk wrote:
"that reasoning validates using horns in the recap of the first movement of Beethoven 5 (which originated, ostensibly, because some early 20th century conductors decided that Beethoven would have used horns instead except that his horn players somehow couldn't have played those notes on their natural horns) and other more whimsical substitutions, as long as they're still within an "authentic style.""
No it doesn't.
Using horns to play a passage that they couldn't have played in Beethoven's day is obviously inauthentic. (That's not to say that it is necessarily inexcusable, but it is a major change that requires an awful lot of justification.)
Using the bass clarinet, with which Tschaikovsky was perfectly familiar, to play a passage that is very difficult to bring off on the bassoon, is just common sense. What would Tschaikovsky's reaction have been? Most likely - "Well I thought it would work OK on the bassoon, and there was no point bringing along an extra instrument for the sake of four notes. But sure, use whatever works."
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-12-15 17:13
cigleris asked me "What is the authentic style for Tchaikovsky?"
I don't know. But I would surmise that nineteenth century performance practice in Russia was a whole lot different from common practice in the West today.
I would like performers to spend their time thinking about stylistic issues, not obsessing about tiny details of instrumentation.
I do care about seating the violins as Tchaikovsky would have expected.
I do care about an appropriate use of rubato and vibrato (whatever "appropriate" might mean in this context).
I don't care about moving four miserable notes from one instrument to another, and I don't believe Tchaikovsky would have cared either.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2008-12-15 18:51
NorbertTheParrot wrote:
> I don't care about moving four miserable notes from one
> instrument to another, and I don't believe Tchaikovsky would
> have cared either.
Just another belief system, eh?
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2008-12-15 19:42
Norbert wrote:
"I don't care about moving four miserable notes from one instrument to another, and I don't believe Tchaikovsky would have cared either."
I think Tchaikovsky did care. He wouldn't have written so passionately about the orchestration and how hard he was finding it to family, friends and collegues. Tchaikovsky was imensely proud of the Symphony and was very upset when the reaction to the first performance was extremely flat.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-12-15 20:02
"Just another belief system, eh?"
Well, did you want me to say "I know for a FACT that Tchaikovsky wouldn't have cared".
If you want to believe that Tchaikovsky would have cared desperately about the orchestration of those four notes, considering it to be absolutely vital to the appreciation of the entire work, far outweighing any other considerations of style and interpretation, then of course that is your right. You may be correct. He might have been a big enough idiot to think that. Come to think of it, I never much liked his music anyway.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2008-12-15 20:08
NorbertTheParrot wrote:
> He might have been a big enough idiot to
> think that.
I know that Tchaikovsky knew the difference in tone.
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-12-15 20:22
"I know that Tchaikovsky knew the difference in tone."
Well, I doubt you actually KNOW, but I'd agree it's a pretty good assumption. I damn well hope he did.
But so what?
Bach knew the difference in tone between a harpsichord and a clavichord, but he didn't generally seem to care very much which instrument was used.
For that matter, Brahms could tell the difference between a viola and a clarinet EVEN WITH HIS EYES CLOSED, but he allowed either to perform his sonatas......
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2008-12-15 20:25
NorbertTheParrot wrote:
> For that matter, Brahms could tell the difference between a
> viola and a clarinet EVEN WITH HIS EYES CLOSED, but he allowed
> either to perform his sonatas......
Yes, HE did.
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Author: asabene
Date: 2008-12-24 01:57
I have two recordings that use the bassoon... an old Toscanini recording with Philadelphia and a recording of the Concertgebouw and Bernard Haitink... In the Toscanini, it sounds really bad when the bassoon comes in... sticks out like a sore thumb and the bottom note doesn't speak well. In the Haitink, the clarinet is playing very quietly (we'll say it's pianissimo for our purposes) and then the bassoon pops in at like mezzo piano... just sounds bad. I'd say the best reason for why no conductors want to use the bassoon to finish off the solo is because it simply makes no sense... doesn't work, sounds worse... I suspect it was possibly something Tchaikovsky miscalculated... we can't say with any certainty what was used in the premiere... I think it's important to remember that Tchaikovsky died only like 9 days after the premiere and that he might simply not have known how it sounded prior to actually hearing it... the score was, in fact, already published by then with the bassoon playing the notes... his death so soon after could possibly mean he didn't have time to make a changes with the publisher for the part that we all have to read off of... just a speculation...
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