 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Oded Cohen
Date: 2009-05-27 17:02
Darius Milhaud Sonata, for flute, clarinet, oboe & piano Op. 47
Heitor Villa-Lobos Chôros No. 2 for flute & clarinet
Van Cott sells a CD with their recordings (CD127: French Clarinet Art) -
How are they like? (kind of a general question...)
what is their level?
and most important - where can I get the sheet music?
Oded
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Author: tacet
Date: 2009-05-27 20:16
At least I've got some basics: both works are in print by well-reputed publishers and so should be available through a serious web shop. Here are their sheet music "coordinates" as obtained from two web shops in germany both of which list them as "in stock":
Milhaud Sonata: published by Durand (ISMN: 044045518)
Villa-Lobos: published by Eschrig (ISMN: 045012137)
AFAIK, both pieces are serious matters, I'd say advanced college level. Note that the Villa-Lobos requires an A instrument.
Regarsd
(tacet)
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-27 20:27
Like a lot of Milhaud's pieces from that period, the Sonatine is very juicy, noisily polytonal, has some amazing sonorities in it and is great fun to get your teeth into. It has some great virtuosic moments for everybody but ends in complete despair. (What's not to love? ) It's not easy (least of all for the pianist) but I would suggest it's one of the (few!) truly great pieces for winds and piano.
If you can find the recording with Pascal Rogé, snap it up - that's a particularly characterful version.
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Author: reedwizard
Date: 2009-05-27 20:55
The Milhaud is very accessible and can be performed by advanced high school students. The Jeu movement is for violin and clarinet alone, it has a tricky spot rhythmically but is not beyond good students.
Sheet music plus has it in stock.
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-27 21:51
reedwizard, I'd be reckoning that's the Milhaud Suite for violin, clarinet and piano you're talking about... (as opposed to the Sonata for flute, oboe, clarinet and piano)
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Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2009-05-27 22:45
The Villa-Lobos is a great concert piece.
In my opinion it works better with violin than with flute.
Both work wonderfully but there is an extra dimension with violin.
The piece is short - around 4 1/2 minutes, but a great opener of a first or second half.
------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Aldrich
Clarinet Faculty - McGill University
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre Metropolitain de Montreal
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre de l'Opera de Montreal
Artistic Director - Jeffery Summer Concerts
Clarinet - Nouvel Ensemble Moderne
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Author: Oded Cohen
Date: 2009-05-28 06:27
Thanks everybody! You have been very helpful
I will go for the Milhaud Sonatine (already played the suite, so I understand what are "noisily polytonal, ...amazing sonorities " that Oliver Sudden mentioned)
Oded
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-28 10:31
Do hear the Rogé recording of the Sonate if you can (with Catherine Cantin, Maurice Bourgue and Michel Portal) - it's out of print but arkivmusic have it. Very very French - I think it's an ideal performance. Also has some great Françaix and Poulenc...
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=150121
"The most considerable work here, apart from Poulenc's Elegie on the death of Dennis Brain, which laces its broad threnody with an occasional flicker of the Puckish humour characteristic of that great player, is Milhaud's Sonata for wind trio and piano. Written in 1918 in uncompromising polytonality, it begins enchantingly in a pastoral vein which, however, is overtaken by menace, and ends in a dirge (occasioned by the wave of deaths from an epidemic of Spanish flu in Rio); between these movements come two others, one with a lively chaos of conflicting keys and rhythms, the other with a frenzy of violently dissonant warring voices."
-- Lionel Salter, Gramophone
I'll second that.
Post Edited (2009-05-28 10:33)
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Author: Oded Cohen
Date: 2009-05-28 12:38
I played the suite - the level was OK (we played the first movement slower than most performers, but I liked it that way) -
If this piece is similar, I see no problem
Oded
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Author: Pappy
Date: 2009-05-28 13:26
Oded Cohen wrote:
> I played the suite - the level was OK (we played the first
> movement slower than most performers, but I liked it that way)
> -
> If this piece is similar, I see no problem
>
> Oded
I also played the suite recently - with my son on Violin. Great fun! Great piece. I don't know this one yet, but I've not yet found a Milhaud that I don't like.
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Author: oliver sudden
Date: 2009-05-28 13:34
The Sonate is indeed a bit trickier than the Suite but the musical rewards are much greater, I think. It's much, much darker and goes places the Suite never dreams of going. It was written just after the First World War and during the influenza epidemic, as Salter mentions above. I think it's one of his very finest things.
There's also a recording on Orfeo by the way (Nicolet/Holliger/Brunner/Maisenberg). A bit Swisser but still very fine and it includes the various sonatinas from around the same time.
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Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2009-05-28 20:09
Oliver - your appetizing descriptions of the Milhaud Sonate got me interested enough to check my recordings to see if I had it.
Indeed I have a recording of it, although I haven't listened to it yet.
It is played by Ensemble Polytonal (Rien de Reede, Flute; Jan Spronik, Oboe; Els Vreugdenhil, Clarinet; Marcel Worms, piano) on Channel Classics.
Despite the pianist's name I look forward to listening to this piece and perhaps programming it on one of my chamber series.
Pappy commented, "I've not yet found a Milhaud that I don't like."
I find that Milhaud's Suite d'apres Corrette for oboe, clarinet and bassoon does not work very well in concert. For me the polytonality in this piece is not a source of interest but of aimlessness.
------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Aldrich
Clarinet Faculty - McGill University
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre Metropolitain de Montreal
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre de l'Opera de Montreal
Artistic Director - Jeffery Summer Concerts
Clarinet - Nouvel Ensemble Moderne
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