 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2006-09-29 16:07
I mean stamina. Not technically hardest like fast tonguing, high notes, etc. I mean the piece (or part of a piece) that was the most difficult or even painful to your lips, fingers, etc. More than the piece name, I'm interested to know what in it was so hard and maybe explain why.
I'm asking, because for me it is definitely a piece I'm playing right now. The part that is very hard and even painful is over 4 minutes of holding a low E on bass clarinet, and it comes right at the very end of an hour long piece which is overall very demanding. The more the note continues the pain just gets worse and worse. Also, the fingers start to 'lock' and not feel very comfortable, though I personally don't have the best fingers shape when playing clarinet in general.
The clarinet player from the original recording of this piece, who is a known international and very successful soloist, was a bit angry at the composer for making him play that, and actually bleed a few times from his lip.
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Author: clarinetist04
Date: 2006-09-29 16:36
I played a commission that my wind ensemble did one year. I was principal and the part was straight eighth notes and awkward slurring paterns throughout this 10 minute monstrosity. It sounded good in the end, but that part was not fun to play. By the end of the piece I was just exhausted and gasping for breath.
And I wouldn't have traded that experience for the world.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2006-09-29 16:41
While you're not interested in the piece name, I sure am curious as to who would write 4 minutes of low E on bass clarinet.
I've played a few pieces that were physically impossible, or close to it. Samy Moussa's "Fire!" had impossible passages and fiendishly difficult ensemble counting, and resulted in a few heated arguments with the conductor. Lindbergh's "Corrente" was impossible to play at the surprise tempo we were given at the concert.
As for physically painful, none come to mind... I can remember my embouchre giving out now and again, but not the particular conditions that did it.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: kev182
Date: 2006-09-29 20:01
Copland Sonata for clarinet can is very difficult stamina wise. Originally written for violin, the clarinet doesn't have much of a chance to take a breath during the long phrases.
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Author: crnichols
Date: 2006-09-29 21:05
Jerry Kirkbride's transcription of the Schubert "Arpeggione" Sonata is currently beating me up. The transcription is kept in the original key, a minor, and he uses the Bb clarinet, which puts the clarinet in some awkward keys when Schubert modulates to closely related keys, A major and E major, which put me in B and F# Major for fairly decent lengths of time. The gruppetti are particulary challenging since many are over the break. The practical solution would be to use the A clarinet, but I thought it would be good for me to work on pieces in these keys. In addition to that, since it wasn't written for a wind instrument, like the Copland sonata that Kevin mentioned, it has some very lengthy phrases that aren't typical of clarinet writing.
Actually, the entire recital I'm giving at the end of October has turned into a test of stamina, the Bach Partita in a minor, the aforementioned Schubert, Arvo Paert's Spiegel im Spiegel and the Prokofiev Violin/Flute Sonata transcribed by Kent Kennan.
Christopher Nichols, D.M.A.
Assistant Professor of Clarinet
University of Delaware
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Author: Tom Piercy
Date: 2006-09-29 21:31
Henryk Górecki -
"Lerchenmusik" Recitatives & Ariosos, Op. 53, for Clarinet, Cello & Piano (1984)
This is one of the most taxing pieces I have played.
Taxing because of its length, not the technical difficulty of the clarinet writing.
It is between 40 and 45 minutes long depending on the tempo and flow. There are many, many, many repetitive phrases in each of the movements.
It is also a very exciting and moving composition and I have always felt spiritually spent after performing it. I would highly recommend the piece.
Tom Piercy
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Author: frank
Date: 2006-09-29 22:14
Some of the hardest pieces I have played are band pieces. Some have literally NO RESTS for a at least a page. Try playing a high D or E ppp from nothing after playing whole notes for a page and a half at Q=60-72. Or... playing transcriptions of orchetra pieces. The Midsummer solo looks very easy after playing the violin part (all stacatto @tempo 84-88) for over a page. My embouchure haas litterally collapsed a few times when playing such tiring works. You simply must make due with what you got sometimes in a professional group. Use the teeth! At the end of some of these band concerts, you need to go to sleep. Ah... the days of playing music where I can rest for 50 bars! lol
Post Edited (2006-09-29 22:16)
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Author: Brandon
Date: 2006-09-29 23:47
The hardest ensemble piece I have played would be Britten's opera, a Midsummer Night's Dream. I never really felt connected to the piece and it wasn't that fun to play. From what I remember, it was several hours long. To top it off, I played 5 or 6 performances in a 2 week span of this piece. I was glad when it closed!
The hardest solo piece was Lovreglio's Themes on La Traviata. Not only was it technically difficult, finding good spots to breathe musically seemed very difficult. I enjoy hearing this piece, but I will not rush to pick it up again!
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Author: pzaur
Date: 2006-09-30 03:13
Elsa's Processional - Band Transcription
Slow and mentally very demanding
-pat
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Author: Clarinetgirl06
Date: 2006-09-30 03:51
Well, so far for me, it would have to be Music for Prague 1968 by Karel Husa.
There are many places where you have to sustain a single note for 6+ measures in a very slow tempo (my stand partner ended up circular breathing in those parts, which I can't do yet). Also, the 3 Bb clarinet parts aren't together on a lot of parts and it's hard to count the rests and come in on the right time (also lots of synopation). Then there are many long trills that make your pinkies extremely tired, staccatos everywhere, and lastly intonation that can easily be disastrous (a high F# held out in all the clarinets, flutes, piccolo, and then the rest of the band in F# octaves). Although this piece can be tricky, it's very fun to play. I actually just performed this 1 1/2 hrs ago.
I'm betting though, I'll have pieces much harder than this further on in my clarinet career, but this has been my hardest so far.
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Author: RodRubber
Date: 2006-09-30 04:33
The toughest piece i have ever played physically was Echoes for clarinet and electronics by altin volaj. The language of the piece integrates quarter tones to a great extent. Some of the fingerings involved in performing this piece were absolutly insane. In one place, i was actually using my right thumb on the front of the clarinet covering a tonehole, so i could do some other thing with my third and pinky fingers. Its sort of hurt my hand.
Also, the bass clarinet part in schoenberg chamber symphony no. 1 is about as physically taxing as it can get.
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Author: mnorswor
Date: 2006-09-30 05:23
"Clarinet and String Quartet" by Morton Feldman.
The piece is in one movement, 46 straight minutes worth of nothing but ppp sustained playing at quarter note = 52 (or thereabouts). There's not a rest in the piece until the 14th minute.
Physically most demanding piece I've ever heard... Feldman's String Quartet No.2. It's 6 hours of the same type of playing in ONE MOVEMENT. Kronos had to cancel their second NY performance of this several years ago. They played it first about 30 years ago in NY. Their reason for cancellation a few years ago was that they simply could not hold up their instruments for that long a time anymore!
Feldman gets my vote for most demanding on both the playing and the listening side. But it's FABULOUS music and well worth the effort.
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2006-09-30 06:27
"I sure am curious as to who would write 4 minutes of low E on bass clarinet."
I'm sorry but since I don't know if he would like to have his name posted on a forum, I prefer not to say. I can just say he is an Israeli composer.
If you are also, as I understand, interested to know why it has 4 minutes of low E, then there is earlier in the piece a melody by the bass clarinet. In the very end the piano and contrabass play the same melody while the bass clarinet is holding the low E (the piece is for clarinet, piano and contrabass).
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2006-09-30 14:26
(1) In the band transcription of Tannhäuser Overture, the first violin part, given to the first clarinets, has pages and pages of 16 note descending scales, in groups of two with each note repeated. To die from.
(2) Kenny G's 30 minute circular breathing phrases.
(3) Anything minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist minimalist andtwoexcruciatinghoursmore.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Hank Lehrer
Date: 2006-09-30 15:23
Ken,
You are right about the band transcriptions. Most seem to be left in the original key and if the clarinets had A clarinets and A parts, things would be easier.
However, as I recall Festive Overture by Shostakovitch is set in a better "band key."
HRL
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Author: Max S-D
Date: 2006-09-30 19:54
Not on a clarinet, but when I played an old arrangement of "Tenderly" with the big band I played in at the community music center in San Francsico I was playing second tenor. In this arrangement, the melody is played mostly by soloists, trumpet, first alto and then an obligatto from the first tenor. The rest of the sax section just holds long tones for almost the whole chart. In the second tenor part, more than half of them are low (D and below). I had just switched mouthpieces recently to one with a much slimmer profile and higher baffle. This was just an absolute killer for the embouchure. It made me a lot stronger, though. Then I had to play a solo on the next chart.
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Author: calclar
Date: 2006-10-01 00:39
Played well?
Mozart. Clarinet Concerto.
Post Edited (2006-10-01 00:40)
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Author: William
Date: 2006-10-01 15:05
Stan Kenton's "Peanut Vender" (on bari sax) at the end of a 4 hr gig.
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Author: Carol Dutcher
Date: 2006-10-01 18:23
High Society solo, especially at a break neck speed. Who ever decided that songs have to be played fast to be good?
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2006-10-01 19:35
Oh dear, it doesn't look like calclar actually read the question...
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2006-10-01 21:57
"Stan Kenton's "Peanut Vender" (on bari sax) at the end of a 4 hr gig."
Not only that, when it's decided that all the players get up and walk around playing it - even the reluctant ones (yeah, ME!)!
How does the bari part go again? Oh yeah, low B.. F# low C#.. F# low B.. F# low C#.. F# low B.. zzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz.
That, and the same with Tuxedo Junction... 'but the punter's love it' - pity they don't know OUR pain/shame!
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: toney
Date: 2006-10-02 00:14
Hardest piece ever? Has to be hakola's "Loco" for clarinet solo. Makes Corigliano Concerto look like an etude, and an easy one at that........
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Author: DareWreck8402
Date: 2006-10-03 00:51
Hi,
The hardest piece for me atleast, physically, has been the second clarinet part of Ponchielli's Il Convegno....phew, there are more notes than the first part (which I've also played) and no where to breath on the last page......I just remember being stuffed with air throughout the last two pages and getting really REALLY tired....and all those notes don't help.....what a workout!
-D.
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Author: diz
Date: 2006-10-03 01:07
Sorry, but clarinetists are kidding themselves if they have "difficult music" ... have a chat with any pianist about the 24 preludes and fugues (Shostakovic) or the 3rd Piano Concerto (Rachmaninov) just to give two examples.
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
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Author: Alphie
Date: 2006-10-03 11:22
Just picked out Schostacovich 7 (Leningrad) Eb part to practice. Concert in 3 weeks. After having played #5 recently I had almost forgotten that this one is even more exhausting.
Alphie
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Author: 68fordfalcon
Date: 2006-10-03 12:13
I don't know if it is THE most taxing, but one that comes to mind (and is performed often) is Beethoven 9. Of the standard orchestra lit, it's one of the most challenging in terms of stamina in my opinion. Of course, if you play in a smaller orchestra, or in a good hall, it's a little more manageable.
Campbell MacDonald
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Author: CJB
Date: 2006-10-03 17:25
contrabass part of Blue Shades
Nothing painful about the embouchure or number of notes or anything like that. For me it was the pain in my right hand due to the awful ergonomics of the instrument I was using. The peg slipped during the rehearsal as I was trying to get it into position - wretched thing landed on my right foot.......well it took me away from thinking of the pain in my right hand.
I now refuse to ever play that particular instrument again.
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Author: ChrisArcand
Date: 2006-10-04 23:58
Hah! Peanut Vendor...I recall the Bari's ranting about that SAME thing when I performed it a few years ago. And everyone wonders why I love to play a soprano instrument.
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Author: Gregory Smith ★2017
Date: 2006-10-05 00:50
I would have to agree that the 9th Symphony of Beethoven is one of, if not the most grueling Bb/A/C clarinet parts in the repertoire. Not only is it's slow movement demanding in every way, but I've played it all the way down to 1/2 the printed tempo (Solti recording) without assistants to help with breathing, etc.
In addition, the length of the piece and the need to concentrate in order to play all of the notes without error (pitch, dynamics, style, good sound, articulation, rhythmic accuracy, etc.) is a supreme test in the realm of clarinetistry. Many times it is programmed in conjunction with the 8th Symphony of Beethoven which I don't need to explain the challenges that work provides the clarinetist.
Of the Eb parts that I've played, the opera "The Shadowless Woman" of R. Struass ranks up there along with the Mahler 6th (at least with the demands of the CSO) insofar as endurance is concerned.
I say all of this because there is a tendency to be somewhat dismissive of works that we are well acquainted with at the inclusion of technical firecracker works that require a different type of taxation. Has anyone ever heard "The Clarinet" by Maurice Constant? Guy DePlus couldn't even play it in his heyday. I know it because I was there and he demonstrated so and even admitted as much.
That is why I am more than a little dismayed at the admonishment earlier in this thread of a poster named *calclar* for having listed the Mozart Concerto. In fact I might perhaps also list that work as the "Physically hardest piece I've ever played".
I've judged many a professional clarinet competition at the highest of levels where the participants could perform every conceivable gymnastic for any period of time on their instrument leaving one with the impression that they had mastered not only the piece but the clarinet as well.
When these same contestants were asked to play the Brahms Eb Sonata or the Mozart Concerto well (if I remember calclar's caveat), they had not the chops or the concentration to get to the end of the first movement - let alone the entire work - without playing either out of tune, out of rhythm, with a less than acceptable sound - or all three simultaneously (obviously because of physical or psychological fatigue).
Gregory Smith
Post Edited (2006-10-05 00:53)
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2006-10-05 06:03
Mr Smith- I'm not trying to take away from the difficulty of playing the great masterpiees well. I'm certainly not saying that it's more difficult to play ridiculous modern pieces with 10000 notes per bar than it is to play the Mozart concerto in terms of quality. But the origianl question was specifically about physical stamina.
clarinbass wrote: "I mean the piece (or part of a piece) that was the most difficult or even painful to your lips, fingers, etc"
If you put the Mozart Concerto in this category, then you must be doing something wrong. And you certainly can't be using a Greg Smith mouthpiece! ;-)
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Author: Ryan25
Date: 2006-10-05 14:50
I agree with Mr. Smith about the Mozart Concerto and deffinetly the Beethoven 8th and 9th Symphonys. I performed as principal in a regional orchestra in the bay area a couple of years ago the Grieg Piano Concerto, Schubert Unfinished Symphony, and Beethoven 8 and I was exhausted after each of the 3 concerts.
I think to maintain and produce a vocal, lyrical, transparent sound and phrasing on the Mozart Concerto can be very demanding to ones physical stamina. Not just the exposition that we play for auditions but the whole concerto. We must also consider the context of the solo part and how it interacts with the orchestra. Sometimes we are the lead and sometimes we are not. It's not a Weber concerto where we just blaze away and the orchestra chugs along with 8th notes. There are many moments where magic can happen if the soloist is a master of his instrument and very sensetive to the piece and orchestra. I really think it's a lot harder than we give it credit for. It's why I believe it is one of the great master pieces for our instrument.
Another piece that I have not seen mentioned yet is Ingolf Dahl's Concerto a Tre for Clarinet, Violin, and Cello. It's about 20 minutes long with out a break and takes a good amount of stamina to get through to the end. Don't put it at the end of a recital....I found out the hard way.
Post Edited (2006-10-05 15:26)
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Author: clar502
Date: 2006-10-05 18:38
No one to date has mentioned woodwind quintet literature. I am currently working on a quintet by Tomasi that will be extremely taxing when we perform it in November. Any Reicha quintets are like major orchestral symphonies with no rest. Francaix quintets, the Nielson quintet, I could go on.
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Author: Gregory Smith ★2017
Date: 2006-10-05 19:49
Hi Liq -
I was indeed making the point that there is great physical difficulty playing the great masterpieces *well* (including the Mozart Clarinet Concerto) as anything I've ever played by Berio, Constant, Adams, Pousser, etc.
Did the Beethoven 9th at 1/2 tempo feel like swimming 5 lengths of the swimming pool underwater - an athletic event unlike anything I've found in other pieces? Yes. Very close to the sensation of drowning I imagine.
Was it worth it? Was it at the same time musically challenging? Probably more-so than 48 minutes of Feldman or incessant lines of minimalist stuff, or the last pages of 1st vln. parts from Tannhauser (which I played in high school) or other band transcriptions.
Did the Mozart cause me physical pain? Of course not. Just the usual sense of "What did I get myself into?" just before walking on stage. Knowing that I would be improvising spontaneously and having to play at the highest artistic level unless one or two missed passages would seriously detract from the music. That playing the Basset Clarinet was physically demanding unlike playing the regular A clarinet.
But mine and I think perhaps calclar's point was best encapsulated in my story about judging competitions. There are different kinds of *fatigue* that cause one to be unable to play at their highest level - even in the relatively simple looking and sounding Mozart Clarinet Concerto.
(And yes. All this even while playing my own mouthpiece.) ; ^ )
Gregory Smith
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Author: diz
Date: 2006-10-05 22:10
Greg Smith: Die Frau Ohne Schatten is probably my equal favourite Strauss opera with Daphne. Yes, I own a full score and the clarinet writting is extremely taxing in every regard. Where did you play this seldom performed and beautiful work, if you don't mind my asking? It's only been staged here once, in Melbourne, with the Melbourne Symphony in the pit as the opera orchestra in that city is too small.
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
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Author: Gregory Smith ★2017
Date: 2006-10-06 07:58
Hi diz -
Guesting at a very early age with the S.F Opera during the very late 70's or very early 80's.
My now departed colleague and dear friend David Breeden forewarned me to obtain the Eb part a few months in advice. Prescient advice for all!
Gregory Smith
Post Edited (2006-10-06 08:34)
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Author: LarryBocaner ★2017
Date: 2006-10-06 13:18
My friends (and ex-students) Linda Baker and Jim Ognibene -- Chicago Lyric Opera and Metropolitan Opera bass clarinetists, respectively -- both tell me that playing the bass clarinet part of Tristan and Isolde is as physically and mentally taxing as running a marathon -- up hill! Haven't had that particular experience in my career.
For me, Mahler 8th ("Symphony of a Thousand") is a lip and lung buster for bass clarinet; also Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite" and Shostakovich 8th Symphony. The tricky little solo that ends the 5th movement of the Shosty comes when your chops are already beat to death by the unending bombast that precedes it!
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2006-10-06 13:30
"The tricky little solo that ends the 5th movement of the Shosty comes when your chops are already beat to death by the unending bombast that precedes it!"
It is common practice for ("French") horn sections to have an extra player so that the 1st horn can save his energy for solos: five players for four parts most often. Is this ever done in clarinet sections? If not, I'd have thought you'd be justified in taking a little rest during the unending bombast; you probably can't be heard anyway when the heavy brass are blasting away.
-----------
If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: LarryBocaner ★2017
Date: 2006-10-06 14:08
David, Your point is well taken -- I do recall having laid back a little during the "bombast" to save some energy for the ultimate solo. However, just as a racehorse with a broken leg wants to continue running with the "herd", I always felt guilty about not contributing my part to the clamor!
Re the Beethoven 9th ( and your observation about the ubiquitous "assistant" horn), I can't remember ever having played the 9th without there being four clarinets on stage -- assistants for both parts. As a matter of fact, our (National Symphony) parts were edited to indicate where the two assistants would relieve the first and second clarinetists. I believe this is also the practice in most US and German orchestras. Also in the Tchaikowsky 6th, we would have three clarinetists on stage -- after my 4-note bass clarinet solo was finished, I would take up the A clarinet to help the principal player conserve his chops for the rest of the work.
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Author: Gregory Smith ★2017
Date: 2006-10-06 14:11
David said:
"I'd have thought you'd be justified in taking a little rest during the unending bombast; you probably can't be heard anyway when the heavy brass are blasting away."
_______________________________________________________
Are you serious? We do that all of the time in the CSO.
Gregory Smith
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2006-10-06 14:22
Gregory - I'm not sure how to take your comment. I honestly don't know whether that would be considered acceptable in a top orchestra.
Maybe you are expected to play come what may. Maybe it's fine to take a break. Maybe you're expected to mime even if you aren't really playing.
-----------
If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Gregory Smith ★2017
Date: 2006-10-06 14:50
David said:
"I honestly don't know whether that would be considered acceptable in a top orchestra....Maybe it's fine to take a break."
__________________________________________
I assure you David that a little trouble with water in a tone hole, a readjustment of the reed, a change of reed, and even stopping for a few tutti measures while others play in unison, etc. only serve to show that we're human.
Gregory Smith
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Author: diz
Date: 2006-10-09 00:54
Greg,
Well said ... good to see the players of the wonderful CSO are, actually, human and not robots!!
I assume, maybe, that you're playing in that wonderful recording of Die Meistersinger (recorded live with Solti at the helm)?
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
Post Edited (2006-10-10 01:27)
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Author: Gregory Smith ★2017
Date: 2006-10-09 03:49
diz -
"I assume, maybe, that you're playing in that wonderful recording of Die Meistersinger (recorded live with Solit at the helm)?"
________________________________________________________
Yes, our first with our then-new Oehler Wurlitzers. It's a delightful recording with a perfect cast - and well recorded (not something we always got from London/Decca).
Gregory Smith
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Author: gotclarinet
Date: 2015-05-08 05:28
Hello!
I am a DMA student at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and I am researching "loco" as a part of my document and lecture recital, along with Hakola's other works. I have not been able to find "loco" as a commercially available score. Where did you locate it?
Thank you!
Erin Vander Wyst
gotclarinet@yahoo.com
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Author: ned
Date: 2015-05-08 09:59
Every single number played in 40 deg. heat in the middle of summer on a steamboat on the Murray River about 10 years ago.
The band incidentally but not accidentally, was placed no less than about 10 feet from the wood fired boiler - there was nowhere else for us to go and it was a 3 hour job.
****************************************************************
Carol Dutcher: wrote ''High Society solo, especially at a break neck speed. Who ever decided that songs have to be played fast to be good?''
The person who taps off the tune is the probable suspect! Next time tell him/her how many BPM you want beforehand, or in retribution, ask the trumpet player (the usual culprit) to play West End Blues.
Yes, this one piece also that I have a deal of trouble with. I tend to favour the Johnny Dodds version from 1923. It's a goal for me though.
By the way - have you ever played Shreveport Stomp?
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Author: Dibbs
Date: 2015-05-08 17:40
The physically hardest piece I've played was a Pomarico crystal.
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Author: TomS
Date: 2015-05-08 22:07
I did some pit orchestra stuff for movie festival. One feature was the 1924 version of "The Thief of Baghdad" ... everyone dripped sweat in a hot old theater with lousy AC ... and the music was a challenge for the conductor to sync with the silent movie ... a trip! The orchestra was lost, much of the time ...
Tom
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2015-05-10 01:51
Since this old thread was recently again taken up, I thought I would respond to the memory that Guy Duplus admitted he couldn't play the physically demanding solo clarinet piece, "For Clarinet," by Marius Constant.
Some sort of law seems to ordain that technical hurdles considered impossible by one generation are gleefully jumped over by {at least some) players of later generations. My guess is that the technically adept Duplus could play the parts of Constant's piece that lay in the conventional range of the clarinet, even the multiphoncs, but shied away from the extended altissimo passages. Some of this barrier to performance may have had to do with the lack of accepted fingering charts for the extended range during Duplus's prime.
Narek Arutyunian, on YouTube, just barely out of his teens, dashes very musically, to my ears, through the entire Constant peice, even fitting the most stratospheric notes into the form and context of the whole without blinking. I'd even have to say that I enjoyed this performance and listened to it several times, as I do when I hear him play less showy but musically demanding works such as the Mozart Trio or the Overture on Hebrew Themes (also on YouTube).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYDMV7u4hNo.
Post Edited (2015-05-10 22:18)
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2015-05-10 17:11
When I was in college, I had a series of lessons out of a book titled 22 Etudes for the Clarinet (to illustrate the styles of J. S. Bach, Handel, Fiorillo, and Paganini) by William Stubbins. I don't know if it's still in print, but it wasn't my favorite. Some of the Bach and Handel selections weren't bad, but playing Paganini selections (with very few rests) on a clarinet was exhausting and not my idea of a good time.
Nobody mentioned the band arrangement of William Tell. It's fun to play, but there sure are a lot of notes and not many rests.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-05-10 18:19
LarryBocaner wrote:
> Re the Beethoven 9th ( and your observation about the
> ubiquitous "assistant" horn), I can't remember ever having
> played the 9th without there being four clarinets on stage --
> assistants for both parts. As a matter of fact, our (National
> Symphony) parts were edited to indicate where the two
> assistants would relieve the first and second clarinetists. I
> believe this is also the practice in most US and German
> orchestras. Also in the Tchaikowsky 6th, we would have three
> clarinetists on stage -- after my 4-note bass clarinet solo was
> finished, I would take up the A clarinet to help the principal
> player conserve his chops for the rest of the work.
I know this is an old thread and hope that, since it has reappeared, Greg Smith, Larry Bocaner and other orchestra players who contributed to it may be monitoring it.
I'm curious about this practice in major orchestras outside of Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Orchestra, during Ormandy's and, I assume, Stokowsky's tenures, always had all four players of each wind instrument on the stage for everything except, maybe (memory begins to fade), concertos, for which the "assistant principals" played the first parts. The section titles were Principal, Assistant Principal, Second, Assistant Second. But one of Muti's changes when he took over the orchestra in the '80s was to stop doubling the wind parts. I don't actually remember a time since Muti arrived when there were assistants on stage to double or relieve the Principals. I can remember Gigliotti once commenting to me that the program he had played the night before - including Pines or Rome and a couple of other clarinet chop-busters - had been harder than ever before because he had no assistant.
It hasn't been a practice in Philadelphia to have assistants on stage since then, at least not that I remember noticing. Most of the chair titles that were were "Assistant Principal" have changed to "Associate Principal" or "Co-Principal," which I assume also have salary implications. The only player I've noticed getting an assistant in recent years has been whoever (whether the Principal or the Associate Principal) is playing the first horn part.
I'm curious. What is the practice in other major orchestras? Has it changed since 2006 when this thread originally appeared?
Karl
Karl
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Author: davyd
Date: 2015-05-11 23:40
The sections of Enesco's Romanian Rhapsody #1 beginning at 24 and 37, mostly upbeat C5s for 2nd clarinet, were pretty wearying the most recent time I played it.
The baritone sax part of Interminable Riff, er I mean Intermission Riff -- nearly all written C4 or lower -- is just dreadful, especially late in a gig.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2015-05-12 01:58
Roger Norrington used double winds in all of the performances and recordings of the Beethoven symphonies with the SWR Symphony Orchestra. This wasn't to save the chops of any of the players, but rather to maintain the correct balance between winds and a large string section, as would have been done in Beethoven's day. I don't know many other modern orchestras that do that these days though.
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Author: taylorfrancis1
Date: 2015-05-13 03:11
Schumann fantasy pieces is super tiring for me. There's never a break in the piece to rest
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Author: tantris
Date: 2015-05-28 20:45
This year i played two specially demanding in that way
1. Spohr 2nd concert
2. Five pieces for cello by schumann. If for clarinet it's difficult to take a breath (the fantasy pieces), playing something orinigally written for strings by schumann means minutes without any rests to breath.
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The Clarinet Pages
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