 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: otterhouse
Date: 2009-01-21 18:33
Hello all,
The earlier topic about Brahms 1, the f minor sonata, prompted me to upload this record on youtube. The lp itself is from the archive of the Dutch public radio.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-wYtDLhvkE
What do you think of this performance?
The whole lp is in mp3 and other formats at:
http://www.europarchive.org/item.php?id=lp-01145_BeG
but can only be downloaded by non-americans (as it is out of copyright everywhere in the world except the USA)
Greetings,
Rolf
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Author: otterhouse
Date: 2009-01-21 21:04
What has that old punk band to do with Brahms f minor sonata?
Or is the link wrong?
Rolf
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2009-01-21 22:19
Well Kell has very unique playing style and he does a great job here. I would also recommend Gervase de Peyer and Daniel Barenboim(spell?) as that version is also very unique.
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2009-01-22 00:12
Wow! Thanks for the memories.
Back in the 60s, I was given this recording on LP record as a gift. At the time, it was the only version of the Brahms that I knew, and I listened to it all the time. I no longer have a turntable to listen to my old LPs, and I hadn't heard this recording in years.
When I was in college, I remember playing this sonata once during a lesson. I played one part of it just like Kell did, and my teacher wondered why I played it that way. I explained that I had heard Kell play it like that. The teacher was a kind man, and he nicely said that really wasn't the way it should be played. He did respect Kell, though, and said that Kell had once come to campus and that he had had Kell over to the house. My jaw dropped. "You really had Kell over to your house!" For a college freshman of the early 70s who idolized Kell, this was just like hosting the president of the United States for dinner.
I agree with Iceland clarinet that "Kell has very unique playing style and he does a great job here." I might not play like Kell, but I respect other schools and styles of playing.
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2009-01-22 00:36
Other things to take into count is that Kell played on open mouthpiece with soft reeds(2 1/2) and double lip embouchure.
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Author: clancy
Date: 2009-01-22 10:21
Reginald Kell did not play an open mouthpiece.
His clarinets and mouthpiece are housed in the University of Edinburgh musical instrument museum.
I had the opportunity to examine, play and measure his setup last year.
His mouthpiece was a hand made ebonite piece by A Worrell (I forget the correct spelling). It has a large chamber and crooked facing, around 1.10 mm tip...not open, even by 1930s standards 1.1mm tip wasnt unheard of. The crooked facing I find very interesting, it appears to have been applied intentionally, did not warp that way; I havent seen many facings like that from the period.
The clarinets were made by Hawkes and Son - Excelsior Sonorous Boehm System, dating to 1927/28. Hawkes imported many of their instrument bodies from France, some from the Martel company - many believe this pair are Martels. I for one think they are most likely a very good copy of a Martel made by Hawkes.
The mouthpiece is very unusual, very free - the clarinets are absolutely gorgeous.
Peter Howes, a former pupil and friend of Kells recently told a colleague of mine that Mr Kell used that pair of clarinets and mouthpiece throughout his career - he did experiment with other instruments but always went back to them as his favourites.
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Author: weberfan
Date: 2009-01-22 12:50
Clancy,
re: the description of Kell's mouthpiece
By crooked facing, do you mean that each rail begins its curve away from the reed at a different point?
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Author: clancy
Date: 2009-01-22 13:09
Thats right Weberfan.
Most mouthpieces made today have straight facings - the rails begin from the table, carry on through the curve and end at the tip on a parallel plane. So when we measure with our glass gauge the metal gauge laid across the rails is perfectly perpendicular to the window of the mouthpiece.
An asymmetric mouthpiece does not have parallel rails, one veers off course for a certain degree, in some cases the entire facing, sometimes just partially in one area.
Often times asymmetry occurs when a mouthpiece warps and wears, certain points along the lay go out of sink. For example, Frederick Thurstons mouthpiece, which is in the Edinburgh collection, has a very straight lay from the tip down to the bottom 25% of the facing, where one side has clearly worn away and the parallel measurements are disrupted.
What tells me that Kells mouthpiece was intentionally made crooked is the fact that is it uniformly asymmetric from the break away point at the table all the way to the tip. Sometimes a mouthpiece can wear in this way from extreme ligature pressure and wear, but I have never seen anything that carefully and evenly worked out.
Why Kell preferred a crooked facing is anyones guess, perhaps he had uneven teeth, or maybe just liked the feel of it.
Post Edited (2009-01-22 13:10)
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Author: DAVE
Date: 2009-01-22 13:58
Well, it's certainly different, but I kinda like it. The piano is very well done. The clarinet is just... not sure.... somehow it sounds jolly... but in later in the movement it just sounds clear and even. Thanks for posting this.
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2009-01-22 14:07
Clancy I should have said I think he play on an open mouthpiece wasn't sure. But I'm almost 100% that he did indeed play on reeds # 2.5 with double lip embouchure.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-01-22 17:24
DavidBlumberg wrote:
> You can hear my Brahms on
> http://www.music.download.com
>
Thanks for the link.
I had a technical problem trying to play the track of mvt. 1 of the Brahms Trio, so I didn't get to hear that one, but I enjoyed listening to your playing on the other tracks. Thanks for sharing them with us.
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2009-01-22 17:49
When I attended a Master Class at Sacramento State College/University with Kell in the late '50s or early '60s, he was playing a Boosey and Hawks.
He made a point of telling us to get a really competent technician to keep our instruments up --and then he tore the instrument apart and dumped them unceremoniously into a briefcase.
Bob Phillips
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2009-01-22 18:03
Thanks MRN - it was from 10 years ago at the Princeton FAME Festival.
I was playing my Prestige A, but no Backun stuff yet. The recording is from a 128k MP3 file so a bit bright from that. The David Trio was from my College Senior Recital in 1986.
I oughta make some new solo recordings with the Backun equipment..... Have to heal my tendon first.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: Caroline Smale
Date: 2009-01-22 19:34
Back in the 50's unless one lived in or near a capital or major city the only way to hear the great clarinet soloists was by recordings.
I have a copy of the (UK) 1950 Gramphone Guide (which is still almost entirely 78 recordings with a small appendix covering these "new" LPs) and a while back went through all the major clarinet works listed. With only the exception of 2 works everything else was recorded by just 3 artists
Alfred Boskovsky
Jaques Lancelot
Reg Kell
the exceptions were 1 work each by Frederick Thurston (Bliss Quintet) and Pauline Juler (forget the work)
so my tastes were formed by listening to these three very different players which was no bad thing since one was less inclined to be stereotyped by a single "national" style.
Whilst not agreeing with everything Kell did I thought he was a marvellous player in those days and still admire many of his old recordings. However for the romantic repertoire Boskovsky was superb and in the French style Lancelot and the French Wind Quintet were equally masterly.
Even within this country in the 50's there was still a great diversity of style ranging from Thurston (very firm and straight but fluent) to Brymer with his rich vibrato (not quite the same as Kells but in a similar mould)
Personally I wish we still has such a diversity of style to choose from.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-01-22 21:13
Rolf wrote:
<<I'm curious what people in the '50s thought of his vibrato.>>
Here's an article from 1950 by a clarinetist who didn't like vibrato (Simeon Bellison) and thought it was becoming too prevalent at the time. It's not about Kell, in particular, but you can probably guess what Bellison would have thought about Kell's vibrato from reading the article.
http://www.clarinet.org/journal/anthology/1950-10-Bellison.asp
I noticed a few things I found somewhat interesting about this article. One was his statement that "Vibration in winds sounds as unpleasant as strings without vibrato." Notice he didn't say just clarinets--he said "winds," the only exception being the saxophone. I have to disagree with him on strings, though--I actually really like the vibratoless strings of the "Stuttgart sound" and of period performance groups.
Another is that he makes a distinction between continuous vibrato (a habit he likens to an intractable communicable disease) and the sort of transitory vibrato that results from phrasing, which he himself admits to employing without apology.
I think it's also interesting that the continuous vibrato in wind playing he seems to view as a phenomenon of American origin arising out of the individualistic tendencies of jazz players who "compete with each other to prove virtuosity." I wonder if that means Bellison would have viewed (or perhaps did view) Kell as actuallly sounding "too American."
Post Edited (2009-01-22 21:33)
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