 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2008-03-19 23:08
Has anyone heard or indeed own the recording that Keith Puddy did of the two sonatas on Muhlfeld's instruments? would love to hear it.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-03-20 00:39
I have it. The pianist also used a Brahms-era instrument. I think it's a better than average interpretation, but not as good as the best. The main interest, of course, is hearing the instrument the music was written for.
The Ottensteiner Bb has a German-style bore and sounds noticeably different from modern French and English clarinets. It's sound is also somewhat lighter and softer than modern German instruments (as is the piano).
The difference in fingering (particularly the use of the right thumb) is clearly not intuitive for Puddy. I get the feeling that most of his attention is on the playing of the instrument, with less left over for phrasing than would be ideal.
Puddy got a substantial grant that as I recall let him put a year into preparing the Ottensteiner and learning to play it, but I wasn't convinced that he got the best out of it.
At the Clarinet Congress in London several years back, a US player gave a recital on Simeon Bellison's clarinet. I asked Kalman Bloch, who was a Bellison student, whether the player sounded like Bellison, and he said no. He said his daughter, Michele Zukovsky, who plays Oehler clarinets, sounded very much like Bellison. In the same way, Puddy by necessity had modern conceptions about reeds and sound, and he obviously didn't switch to an Ottensteiner for all his work. Nevertheless, it's an important recording, which everyone should hear.
Charles Neidich also plays an Ottensteiner replica. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cy-kYMD2Yc. Even more so than Puddy, I think he plays it in a 20th/21st century style and with his own individualistic sound.
Finally, I'm not convinced we would like Mühlfeld's own playing today. Jack Brymer said he met a violist who had played with Mühlfeld and said that he had a "big vibrato." Early 20th century recordings of string players show them swooping and sliding all over the place.
Mühlfeld lived into the era of recording, but the holy grail of a Mühlfeld cylinder has never been found. We can only hope.
Ken Shaw
Post Edited (2008-03-20 14:10)
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2008-03-20 07:01
From the book "Richard Mühlfeld- Brahms' Clarinettist" Keith Puddy writes:
"Practising involved travel to the instrument in Meiningen, as it was not allowed out of the Schloss. I did four return journeys from England of some 1000 miles each by car. I stayed for a week on each visit."
Hardly ideal circumstances for preparing a recording! I certainly wouldn't want to try to learn an instrument like that in only four weeks. The F sharp/C sharp key is operated by the right hand thumb!!!
About the performance Keith Puddy writes:
"My approach to the Brahms Sonatas on the Ottensteiner was to try to produce the sound the instrument wanted to make. To make full use of the boxwood's light sound and colour, I avoided pushing and forcing sounds to produce the modern thick and heavy colours of the late 20th century. A light(ness) of touch to the sound and a freedom of phrasing was my aim.
On the 22nd October 1990 the performance of the Brahms Clarinet Sonatas took place at the Brahms Saal, Meiningen. The piano was played by Malcolm Martineau. It was recorded by the BBC and later issed on CD."
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Author: graham
Date: 2008-03-20 07:44
I think it is worth pointing out that Puddy does a great deal of playing on instruments of that period, albeit usually Boehm system. He is not merely a "visitor" from the late 20th Century.
Klocker has recorded these sonatas on an instrument of the period, and as an Oehler player he probably hardly had to adapt. I do not know how close his instrument was to Muhlfeld's though. There is also the Hacker account, again on contemporaneous instruments, and one I like, but very different from Klocker, and sometimes regarded as too raw sounding. I have also heard a live performance on such an instrument by Lawson, and the sound was very mild and fairly covered.
I have not heard the Puddy version. Is it still generally available?
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2008-03-20 13:03
Somewhere in my bazillion tapes I have a recording of Simeon Bellison playing the Mozart Concerto Rondo (not 622, the piano rondo that he arranged).
Are there any other recordings of him playing out there? (in the collections that have been released on CD)
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2008-03-20 13:24
That's really interesting. I remember when I was a fresh faced student and had just started learning the classical clarinet that I played for Colin Lawson and he had just got his Ottensteiner copies and that he was going to do the Brahms Sonatas on them. That was the last I heard. I recently bought a recordin done a few years ago of the Quintet played by Lesliey Schatzberger on a Ottensteiner instrument. Lesliey was a pupil of Colin's I believe. She as principle with the London Classical Players and various other period bands.
Interesting also about playing other players instruments. Keith Puddy owns Reginald Kells clarinets the A is the one he recorded the Brahms Quintet on. I've had the pleasure to hold it, it wasn't really the time and the place to play it though.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: graham
Date: 2008-03-20 14:49
Whoops! When I heard Colin Lawson he was doing the Brahms Quintet. Sorry for the forgetfulness.
At the risk of being indelicate, I would have thought Lesley Schatzberger was too old to be a pupil of Colin Lawson.
I think Edinburgh University (or museum, whichever) owns Kell's pair. Puddy played them one time and wrote that they were not that brilliant. Puddy either owns or uses a pair of Martels from pre 1914, which I think were used by a colleague of Charles Draper's. Kell's instruments apparently were post 1918, but to a similar design, probably not by Martel. Draper's pair, which by the end was a Louis B flat and a Martel A are owned (last I knew) by Michael Farnham. One of the players in the New Queens Hall Orchestra uses Thurston's old Martels from before he had the 1010s.
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