Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2004-06-08 17:37
Ralph -
Alex has the right answer. You need to make the slow movement interesting by playing it the way Weber expected you to -- as a slow but passionate operatic scene.
Listen to a recording of a Weber opera -- or any opera. Just because the music is slow doesn't mean it's dull. You have to make yourself into an opera singer, and pour out the emotion. This means, first of all, understanding where each phrase is going (harmonically), and putting your personality into the lap of each member of the audience. Here's what I wrote in my posting on the Concertino at http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=14529&t=14450
The Concertino has constant changes of mood, which it is your job to bring out. Your first entrance must be as soft as possible, but also intense. This long note (clarion Bb) calls for "messa di voce" (a crescendo and then decrescendo). It's your calling card. You let the audience know you're there. It's more than just a crescendo and decrescendo. In addition to getting louder, your sound must also get bigger, warmer and more colorful. Weber was primarily a composer of operas, and the effect he is looking for is like an opera singer starting a note softly and "closed in" and then opening the tone up like a flower, showing it to the audience, and then closing it back up. This isn't easy to imitate on clarinet, but you need to do something. Add some vibrato. Make the sound brighter as well as louder, by pointing the tip of your chin down and pulling your lower lip out from over your teeth, so that at least half of the red part is outside your teeth. An opera singer will face to one side and then swing slowly to the other, to give all parts of the audience the chance to hear his/her beautiful voice. Raise the bell up to get more sound out, and do the swing yourself with the instrument. You can't afford to be timid or embarrassed. This is your chance to shine.
Of course the slow movement of Concerto # 2 is different from the Concertino, but you need to put the same sort of personality into it. When you start work on it, don't be afraid to roar, and even squeak and squawk. You can always do less, but unless you learn to do more, you're sunk. Imagine you're in Madison Square Garden, with an audience of 3,000, some of them over 100 yards away. How much would you have to do to impress the people all the way at the back? Do twice as much, because, remember, it has to be Grand Opera, even in the last row.
Opera isn't civilized. It's barbaric. It's overpowering love, so sweet your teeth ache. It's overpowering rage, so hot you breath fire and spit nails. You need to surprise even yourself, and scare everyone else half to death.
Enough for now. Otherwise I'll get too excited.
Ken Shaw
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