Author: Cass Tech
Date: 2007-11-20 21:06
Greetings and salutations to the clarinet community! As this is my debut on Clarinet BBoard, allow me to introduce myself. Having returned to the clarinet after a twenty-year hiatus, I am struggling to regain my skills. So I'm pleased to have discovered this website and wish to thank Mark Charette. Let me share a few of my musical memories with you all.
As a kid I attended the National Music Camp at Interlocken for a few summers, and during one of them the following young clarinetists were in attendance: Franklin Cohen, David Schiffrin, Lorin Levee, Alain Damiens and a personal friend who never became a professional but was the best of the lot, Norman Letvin. Arguably the five greatest young players on the planet. Talk about competition!
As a teenager, my parents took my brother and I to L.A. for a vacation; at the time I was studying Stravinsky's Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet. So imagine my excitement when - as we rode the elevator down to the lobby - I suddenly notice this elderly octogenarian troll seated in a wheelchair beside me: it was Igor Stravinsky, himself! If I hadn't been awestruck I would have announced what an honor it was to ride the elevator with one of the centuries finest composers. That was surely the closest I've ever been to greatness.
I once heard a concert in which Robert Marcellus played the Debussy Premiere Rhapsody, Raphael Druian played the Berg Concerto and these - together with Stravinsky's Le Sacre - were all played by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by (to my mind) the greatest conductor of modern music, Pierre Boulez. That was a concert!
But my greatest musical experiences were while playing with Detroit's Cass Tech Symphonic Band. Harold Arnoldi was our conductor - a fine conductor, music educator and a man of enormous warmth and energy. One year we were invited to the National Music Educator's Conference, where we world-premiered a brand new saxophone concerto with the legendary Sigurd Rascher. Our first clarinetist was Norman Letvin, who, although he never became a professional, is now one of the world's leading scientists battling the worldwide AIDS pandemic. Our first-chair oboist, Ted Baskin, later became principal with the Quebec Symphony. Our first horn became principal with the Lousiville Symphony, etc., etc. It was an honor to play with such musicians under so inspiring a conductor.
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