The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: JHowell
Date: 2012-03-25 15:20
Interesting, I'd buy a ticket. Some of the orchestration isn't how I think of the piano part, but a lot of it shows just how orchestral the piano part is to begin with. Schoenberg set a precedent for orchestrating a Brahms chamber work with the G minor quintet, so it's not alarming. I like it.
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Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2012-03-25 17:47
I remember hearing this Berio arrangement over 20 years ago played by Frank Cohen and Cleveland.
One one hand, in the Berio arrangement the piece is no longer chamber music, in the sense that the clarinet is no longer the "third hand" of the piano. Gone is that ineffable, organic interweaving of the two instruments. Perhaps inevitably, in the arrangement there is a separation of clarinet and orchestra. When the two play, following one another, we hear their contributions as episodes, unlike the original in which the two instruments are interlaced, even knit together.
When the arrangement came out, I remember chamber musicians feeling the piece was not magnified or exalted by the orchestration, but diminished, as we lose the intimacy of the original.
On the other hand, the orchestration is idiomatically Brahmsian (at times, spookily authentic) and the listening experience is fascinating. Even if it is not chamber music in the purist sense, it makes for spellbinding listening; hearing a piece we love and know so well in a somewhat "enhanced" version. Personally, I find myself constantly captivated by how Berio has orchestrated the piano part.
Simon
Post Edited (2012-03-25 17:48)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2012-03-26 03:05
This orchestration makes it a NEW piece. I agree with the statements of Mr. Aldrich in that these must be evaluated as two entirely different pieces of music.
.............Paul Aviles
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