 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ed Lowry
Date: 2013-01-18 04:10
Once more I have the fun task of selecting music for our chamber music workshop, and this half-year I'm grouped with violin, viola, cello and piano. One of the joys in playing with this group totalling 25 or so musicians is playing something most have never heard, and to date (over the last 5 years), the response has been great.
Folks loved the Milhaud Trilhaud and the joke I was able to make about it last Sunday. Thanks, Tony for the joke, and everyone for their input on how to pronounce Milhaud.
So, I'm asking for suggestions for a quintet with instrumentation as described above.
On IMSLP, I found works by Fibich, Weingarten, and Labor, all written around 1900. There's also a piece by Theodore Dubois, but the clarinet part doesn't look very interesting and appears to have been transcribed from the original oboe.
I've also found some more modern pieces on a few commercial sites, and since they cost money, I'd be particularly interested if anyone has played and liked (or hated) them before I buy. They include Liebermann (op. 26); David Barton (Pastoralle); David Rakowski (Gut Reaction); Chester Biscardi (Incitation to Desire [tango]) Gundega Smite (Isochasma); and another piece by David Rakowski called the Gardener.
Any thoughts on any of these pieces is greatly appreciated!
Ed.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2013-01-18 10:59
Dear Ed,
If you can get the violist to take a walk, the Walter Rable quartet is a very good piece (piano, clarinet, violin, cello-no viola). Brahms expressed great admiration for it. Somebody else has suggested Franz Scmidt-not to be confused with Florent Scmidt, the French composer). It seems to me that there are two quintets. One has a movement based on a theme by Labor. You can surely get a couple of good movements out of this work (the theme and variations can and sometimes is , played independently). Playing the whole thing is a bit heavy going for players and audiences.
So, hard Labor or be a Rable rouser!
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Ed Lowry
Date: 2013-01-18 14:55
Thanks for the comments. I'll take a close look at the Labor and Scmidt.
We've played movements from both the Rabl and Hindemith in past years ... wonderful pieces. Unfortunately, our violist is attached to the violin player, who were assigned as a team.
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Author: Ed Lowry
Date: 2013-01-18 14:56
... and when the youtube picture of the Hindemith came up on my computer, my initial impression was, "What's Dwight Eisenhower doing here?"
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2013-01-18 16:12
How about the Prokofiev Overture on Jewish Themes?
Peter Cigleris
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Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2013-01-18 17:05
One of the chamber groups with which I perform is comprised of clarinet, strings and piano and we have played a lot of repertoire for this combination and its variations.
The Weingartner is a very long, abstruse piece for a workshop. The pno part is almost 100 pages and the slow mvt is 16 minutes.
The Dubois is a good piece; very accessible, tuneful and audience-friendly. It sounds better with clarinet, not only in my opinion but in the opinion of groups that have recorded it with oboe (!). The clarinet/oboe part sits too low for the oboe to blend effortlessly with the strings. It sounds like a constant struggle.
There is also a quintet for this formation by Ferdinand Thieriot which is very ordinary. A better piece is the Robert Kahn Quintet, Op.54. The Labor is good, if a bit long.
Often the composer writes a part for horn or vla, like in the Kahn and Fibich
so for certain quintets with horn, I take that as a cue to transcribe the horn part for viola (when the horn part is not as idiomatic and substantial as, for example, that in the sextet of Dohnanyi).
Quintets that work very well with the horn part transcribed for vla are those of Vaughan Williams (Quintet in D Major) and "Der Wind", a wonderful impressionistic piece Schreker wrote for Elsa and Grete Wiesenthal's dance-pantomime adaptation of the Oscar Wilde story "The Birthday of the Infanta".
Capyrin wrote a quintet for cl, strs and pno but I do not know it.
For a workshop I think the best pieces are the Fibich, Dubois and Vaughan Williams.
Simon
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Author: dclarinet
Date: 2013-01-19 21:09
Ed,
There is a wonderful piece by Peter Hazzard for this combo. He wrote it for me and the Gabriel Chamber Ensemble in 2000. You can reach him at:
phazzard@lacademy.edu. If he doesn't have a copy, I can make you one of mine.
Carl Anderson
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Author: Ed Lowry
Date: 2013-01-27 21:56
Thanks for all the suggestions. I've ordered several from the Univ. of Maryland Library and decided also to gamble on the Hazzard piece. (Btw, Carl, he has a new e-mail: pphazzard@gmail.com). I'll let you know how I like it.
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