Author: crnichols
Date: 2006-04-09 19:38
This is one of my favorite pieces of all time! It has everything you could want in a piece of music, both from a performers view and a listeners view (at least I think so, some find it abstract). You can learn the notes in 6 weeks, but make sure that in that 6 weeks you are also studying the score, understanding how the soloist and orchestra interact (especially with the snare drum in this case). Think about carefully shaping all of the cadenzas, don't just flip them off as an opportunity to show off how fast you can play, the cadenzas also display the Danish character, and you must take this into account, even when he writes 32nd notes and such. Now, my advice on those technical passages. Analyze them from a theoretical standpoint first. Often you can identify a tetrachord that is linked to another tetrachord, and then repeated throughout the registers, or a repeated sequence of intervals transposed. If you take the time to understand these things, instead of having to think this note, this note, this note, you can think along the lines of this tetrachord and then this tetrachord, and then the same two an octave higher, you've saved yourself a ton of tedious work (if you're learning the Nielsen Concerto, you must know you scales very well at this point, and if you don't, you probably should hold off and spend 6 weeks on those instead). Well, that said, next you must understand the player that Nielsen wrote this for...Aage Oxenvad. Now, the story goes, that the Nielsen knew the members of the Royal Chapel Wind Quintet, and sought to write a concerto especially for each member, making a sort of musical portrait of them. Unfortunately Nielsen passed away after finishing only two of them, and I think we clarinetists are so lucky that one of the concertos he got arond to was for our instrument. Oxenvad was reputed to have a sort of night and day personality, the type that would have dramatic outbursts perhaps. I think that Nielsen portrays this side of his character very well...so obviously if you listen to the music, you need to get hysterical sometimes, and I don't think I need to tell you where exactly...it's pretty obvious. You have to think crazy sometimes in this music, bang pots around, stomp your feet, throw a tantrum, the music calls for it. Also, we have the benefit of two recordings of Oxenvad, the Serenata in Vano and the Quintet, which if you don't have, you should definitely get and listen to. It gives one a sense of the sort of playing Nielsen was expecting. It's the Nielsen Historic Recordings Disc on Clarinet Classics, catalog number CC0002. Also, my personal favorite recording of the Concerto is by Haken Rosengren. I think that he portrays the Danish style quite well, it's very exciting. Well, now I'll leave you to an exciting journey of study and discovery. Oh, one last thing, if you perform it with piano, you must find a good snare drum player. They should be happy to help you out, it's a major orchestral excerpt for them, and they probably already know it, and if they don't, they should.
Good Luck!
Christopher Nichols
1st Infantry Division Band
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