 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2013-07-08 19:00
I'm curious about a change I've noticed in stringed instrument playing lately and I wonder whether the trend is spreading to clarinet players. It seems to me that many -- perhaps the majority -- of currently-active, highly-regarded string players, including violinist Joshua Bell, have recently started expressing emotion by using a great deal more portamento (slides between notes) than they used in the recent past. The younger and middle generation also sounds more "notey" these days -- using little crescendos and decrescendos within the same note for a wah-wah-wah effect.
(Hear that rumbling sound? That's Heifetz, Milstein, Rostropovich and a lot of their contemporaries spinning in their graves.)
Both of these effects are achievable on a clarinet. Clarinet players can go notey deliberately by varying the volume or accidentally by sloppily "stirring the cauldron" with the instrument while we hold a long tone. We can do miniature versions of the gliss at the beginning of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" to achieve something that sounds like portamento on a stringed instrument. A current thread here, in which a student asks about ways to express emotion in Schumann's Fantasiestücke, makes me wonder whether the trend is spreading to wind players and whether it would be wise or unwise for students to adopt these techniques for classes, competitions or recitals.
I'm an amateur, but whether I'm entitled to an opinion or not, I do have one: Although I've admired Joshua Bell for years, I dislike this new trend enough to avoid his most recent recordings. I noticed an even more extreme example of both the notey-ness and the portamento this past Saturday morning in a performance WETA radio aired shoirtly before 9 a.m. EDT: cellist Julian Lloyd-Webber playing "Clair de Lune." The piece is sentimental to begin with. He slowed it way down to tempo lugubrioso and schmaltzed it up even more than normal, by swooping and sliding between notes. Yuck. If clarinet players start to go that route, I'll stick with the older recordings.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2013-07-08 19:05)
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-07-09 02:10
Lelia -
I love Joshua Bell's playing, which for me comes directly from my favorite violinist of all, Fritz Kreisler. Listen to the old recordings by Arnold Rose, the Flonzaley Quartet, Joseph Joachim and Pablo de Sarasate.
I think Milstein played with great (though restrained) sentiment. Listen to his recording of the Lalo Symphonie Espagnole.
As Itzak Perlman says, Heifetz was red hot. He expressed sentiment with his bow arm and portamentos. He occasionally cocked an eyebrow (see the closeups in his Bruch Scottish Fantasy on YouTube) but he didn't have to do more.
I think Rostropovich was very sentimental. His Arpeggione with Britten slobbers all over you. Too much, even for me.
I feel the old, great players spinning when Anne Sophie Mutter plays. When Joshua Bell plays, I feel them stop.
Ken Shaw
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Author: kdk
Date: 2013-07-09 02:51
Listen to nearly any Stokie/Philadelphia recording from the '20s and '30s. I sometimes think the string players must have played with one finger.
Could be we're getting back to that, although I don't hear it in orchestra playing of the last 50 years or so. I think there was enough schmaltz in Stern's and David Oistrakh's playing to give anyone you're hearing today a run for their portamenti.
Karl
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2013-07-09 12:29
Ken Shaw wrote,
> I think Milstein played with great (though restrained) sentiment. >
Yes. I think his restraint was the very thing that gave his playing such strong emotional impact. For me, loading on the shmaltz just sounds corny and that's what I deslike about the amount of portamento Bell uses now (as opposed to a few years ago).
One of the most powerful concerts I ever attended was one of Nathan Milstein's last, at the Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C. He played a brilliant, challenging recital -- and then played Bach's entire D minor Partita as an encore. He gave a magnificent performance, so much so that my husband (an advanced amateur violinist) and I, in the first row of what was then (before remodelling) the "starving students" obstructed view balcony, leaned as far forward as we could get without falling out and realized, when we stood and started to applaud, that we were both hyperventilating and we'd both clenched the balcony rail so compulsively that our fingers had numbed! And yet if I had to choose one adjective to describe that performance, it would be, "restrained." No schmaltz. Almost no portamento. Crescendos and decrescendos on the phrases, or in one direction on a sustained note, not all dippy-swoopy wah-wah-wah. His recordings of the complete Bach sonatas and partitas are my favorites, by far.
>I think Rostropovich was very sentimental. His Arpeggione with Britten slobbers all over you. Too much, even for me.>
I agree -- brain-freeze on my part. A better comparison would have been Yo Yo Ma early in his career.
>As Itzak Perlman says, Heifetz was red hot. He expressed sentiment with his bow arm and portamentos. He occasionally cocked an eyebrow (see the closeups in his Bruch Scottish Fantasy on YouTube) but he didn't have to do more.>
Although Heifetz did use portamento (and I think some portamento is necessary -- I'm not advocating banishment of it), he was highly restrained with it compared to today's performers. In his lessons, he actively inveighed against excessive portamento. He was often criticized by reviewers for being a "cold" performer because of his onstage demeanor. He kept his dignity. He didn't fling himself around and emote all over the place. Hence the humor in Perlman's quip that Heifetz's playing was hot. Yes, it was! And all the hotter because he let the audience pay attention to the music instead of distractingly prancing and gyrating and mugging.
For me this modern trend with the portamento and the notey-ness carries the prancing and mugging into the music itself. And I'm still curious as to whether the changing style of string soloists (whether people agree with my opinion of it or not) is spreading to wind players.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-07-09 17:36
Playing note-by-note (with phrases going nowhere) is the clarinet player's greatest sin. Almost nobody escapes. Karl Leister is like Antonin Scalia's Constitution -- always perfect, but always dead, except in his earliest recordings.
Reginald Kell -- sure. Every note is in the flow. Charles Draper is there 99% of the time, though his whirlwind finger can take over. On his good recordings, de Peyer. Al Gallodoro (and Jack Brymer) on alto sax.
But there's never been clarinetist like John McCormack, and it drives me crazy. GBS, who had great ears, said that Henry Lazarus was uniquely musical, but Lazarus died in 1895, so no recordings. I can only assume Mühlfeld played with a living, breathing musical line. Certainly Brahms wrote them for him. If I had one wish, I would use it to take a digital recorder back to the 19th century and even before to capture the legendary performers, some of whom just missed the age of recording: Mühlfeld and Lazarus, Chopin and Anton Rubinstein. Paganini and Liszt and Clara Schumann. And of course Mozart and Stadler.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2013-07-11 09:50
Ken- you mention de Peyer on his good recordings. I've always enjoyed listening to de Peyer. Which are your favourite recordings of his?
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-07-11 13:58
Liquorice -
My favorite GdP recording is Spohr #1 and Weber # 2. I think it's maybe the greatest clarinet recording of all time, the equivalent of Dennis Brain's amazing Mozart concertos and astonishing Strauss concertos.
Close behind is GdP's first, monaural, Mozart Concerto with Anthony Collins and the London Philharmonic. I treasure it on a 10" London LP. His stereo recording with Maag has never been out of print and undoubtedly blocks any reissue of the mono recording. The Maag version is very good, but with Collins, GdP dances his way through, with every phrase alive and floating on the breath.
Ken Shaw
Post Edited (2013-07-11 22:11)
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2013-07-11 19:23
Thanks Ken. I see that the Weber/Spohr is available for download on iTunes. I'm getting it now...
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