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Louise Reszke the Phantom Clarinetist

Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2017-07-21 02:02

Mozart: Anton Stadler
Weber: Heinrich Barmann
Spohr: Johann Hermstedt
Brahms: Richard Muhfeld

Henry Fillmore: Louise Reszke

Fillmore is well known for his march compositions, and some of them feature fairly difficult clarinet parts. In some regards they are more challenging than typical Sousa marches. He also wrote at least one solo for clarinet and band, titled Lightning Fingers (which I've played). Fillmore himself was familiar with several instruments, especially trombone, but hearing and playing his marches I don't get the impression the parts other than for clarinet are particularly demanding.

According to his Wikipedia bio, Fillmore was associated with some fairly prestigious college bands and other well-known groups, so he probably had some excellent clarinet sections to rely on for his compositions.

I found the following on Louise Reszke at https://www.scribd.com/document/331933200/28-Lightning-Fingers-Solo-for-Clarinet-and-Band-Henry-Fillmore-%CB%86-CB143

"When the solo (Lightning Fingers) was published in 1930, it bore the dedication 'To Louise Reszke the Phantom Clarinetist'. Louise Reszke had been a very popular soloist with the Fillmore Band, and had been prominently featured on Fillmore's popular radio broadcasts over station WLW in Cincinnati. A pretty young teenage girl when Henry first featured her, she had a faultless technique on the clarinet. After she had played a solo with the band on one of their radio broadcasts, the announcer encouraged the audience to guess who the artist was, whether it was male or female, how old, and so forth. People wrote the radio station guessing the answers, and many of them were hilarious. After that Fillmore referred to her as 'the Phantom.' He wrote several solos featuring her, but the best known and most successful was Lightning Fingers.

Information from the book, Hallelujah Trombone!, the story of Henry Fillmore, by Paul Bierley, published by Carl Fischer (ISBN 978-0825849664)."

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