Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2009-05-29 13:53
Ken Shaw wrote:
>> An important new recording of the Mozart Concerto has recently appeared on Harmonia Mundi HMC 901980 http://www.amazon.com/Last-Concertos-Wolfgang-Amadeus-Mozart/dp/B000XQHQWQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1243293026&sr=8-1, also downloadable for 99¢ per movement.
>> It's by Lorenzo Coppola playing a 9-key basset clarinet with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. There have been several recordings on similar clarinets, but this is several steps beyond what's gone before.>>
I didn't know this recording; but have now managed to listen to it, and enjoyed the experience. I don't know about it being several steps beyond what's gone before, though -- more of that anon.
>> First, the orchestra plays "solo and ripieno," with all the strings playing in the passages without the clarinet, but cutting back to a string quartet (plus wind parts) whenever Coppola plays. This allows him to play without having to push the instrument.>>
As has already been remarked, this isn't true. The orchestra plays at their full strength throughout, as one can hear. Indeed, they play with considerable verve and gusto, characterising their contribution in what I would say is quite a 'modern' approach. (Not much bar-hierarchy in evidence here.)
>> Second, Coppola is the first player I've heard who sounds as though he began on the old instrument rather than adapting a modern sound and blowing style.>>
It's difficult to know what this means, beyond the fact that Coppola's version is more significantly different from a performance on a modern instrument than are those of some other players of period instruments. Are we supposed to couple the remark with the 'several steps beyond' remark, and deduce that that is what Ken thinks period performance is trying to achieve -- being as different as possible?
We ALL begin on the old instrument. Then, we have it represent our notion of the piece that we're playing -- including, I might add, what understanding we may have of the 'rules of mapmaking' that characterise how performances of the time were rendered on the page. It's because different people have different notions that performances differ.
Coppola shows himself to be interested in cultivating a 'recorder-like' quality in the upper register, for the most part eschewing tonal variation and definite beginnings. If you like that, all well and good; but it's not a NECESSARY character of the instrument. The low chalumeau and basset register is another matter. Here, rightly I would say, he represents 'another operatic character'.
I have myself come to consider the Concerto to be a much more operatic piece than I did a couple of decades ago. We know that by 1791 Mozart had decided that his future lay in writing operas, because he said so. Therefore it is no surprise that in K622 there are several passages where he has the different registers of the instrument engage in a dramatic dialogue.
One of the best of these, to my mind, is the passage in bars 115-123 of the first movement. Mozart has already called our attention to the idée fixe of the work -- namely the number three. In addition to his ubiquitous three-note figures, this is instanced by the falling or rising third, and by the use of that third in both legato and staccato form. (It's amusing to note the two fragmentary versions that appear in the violas at the end of bar 2 of the solo entry, and in the cellos at the end of bar 4.)
The passage in question juxtaposes the falling, filled-in G/E third (notated pitch) in the clarinet register with the separated EGE three note quaver phrase in the chalumeau register, followed a bar later by the G/E third in separated crotchets.
It's as though a female character is pleading with a male character -- perhaps a young woman trying to win her stubborn brother round to her choice of partner? (They're brother and sister because they both belong to the 'Three' family, you see:-)
First we have the female, cajoling legato version of the falling third, leading to a version of the clarinet's second theme; which is answered definitely -- I'd say in the negative -- by the male version, separated, two octaves lower. She tries again, only to receive the same answer. This provokes an outburst, first diatonic triplets leading to a reiteration of the third a fourth higher (C/A), then chromatic triplets, and then semiquavers, all leading to C/A, and finally to C/A/F# in the pause bar. A woman in love will have her way!
I mention all this because I want to underline the sophistication that Mozart might have expected of his virtuoso collaborator. Stadler was no common-or-garden clarinet player, after all. Indeed, what was said about him was that his playing stood comparison with the best singers. Does that suggest that he SOUNDED as though he 'began with the instrument'?
No. What it rather suggests is that he possessed a wide range of tone colour and nuance in ALL registers. He was a special, charismatic player, who took the instrument beyond its first-blush possibilities.
So when Ken writes that players other than Coppola 'adapt modern sound and blowing style', how does he know what Stadler did by contrast?
For that matter, what IS 'modern sound and blowing style'? Blowing is blowing. Sound is what you want to make it. (In fact, there is not much that you can't do on these instruments when you really put your mind to it over a period of years. Did you know that Cavallini played all his etudes on a 5-key instrument?)
>> Third, he handles the cross-fingerings with complete confidence and smoothness, even at a really brisk tempo in the finale.>>
He handles the problems well, as you would expect of an excellent player in a professional recording. It's not always quite perfect -- but then, who is?
>> Fourth, his musicality is very fine....it's one revelation after another.>>
I noticed one musical detail, which is the use of inégal-type rubato in the slow movement. I don't find that particularly convincing, I have to say. It seems to me to spoil the innocent simplicity of the solo line that I wrote about in:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Klarinet/2000/07/000901.txt
...but you may feel otherwise.
What other musical points did you have in mind, Ken?
Oliver wrote, in part:
>> For me the slow movement is more Largo than Adagio, I have to say. Thousands will disagree with me. (Er, judging from his recording Tony will be one of them so excuse me if I just go and crawl into a hole somewhere.)>>
Oh, come on. Like most serious performers, I change tempos from one day to the next, never mind on a timescale of 25 years.
Tony
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