 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-08-07 01:48
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sundqvist+mozart+clarinet
A very spirited performance of the Mozart Concerto by Christopher "Toffe" Sundqvist that has attracted widespread praise on the Internet. Performed on an S&S basset clarinet, this interpretation seems to have benefited from recent scholarly editions and the need to add articulations that are not spelled out in the original manuscripts, which Sundgvist does with gusto.
Post Edited (2020-08-07 22:00)
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Author: JTJC
Date: 2020-08-07 14:02
Thanks for the post Seabreeze.
Great performance and well worth a listen. Great control, tone and beautiful pianissimos. I’d love a go on that Basset.
Such performances of the Mozart always offer surprises to the listener. I find some players over do the ornamentation. In some cases I wish the players hadn’t bothered as I find their ideas very poor in comparison to the original notes and just get in the way. Great players aren’t always the best musically. But I suppose that was always the case even in Mozart’s day.
Having grown up with particular editions of classical/romantic concertos and been taught to observe what’s written I now find I have different ideas and question why they’re written the way they are. Also, musical research and performance practice has progressed about 50 years since then. I’m not familiar with the modern editions of the Mozart concerto that Seabreeze refers to. Can Seabreeze, or anyone else, say which are worth a look?
Sometime I put concertos of this period into Sibelius minus articulation etc and see what the music wants me to do. All very personal, of course.
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Author: Jeroen
Date: 2020-08-07 15:55
Nice to hear something different. I appreciate it very much when players with his skill level dare to colour outside the lines (and go off the beaten track) and even dare to publish it.
For me this is a bit too capricious. It sounds more like Cavallini than Mozart. But fun to listen to.
I once heard a good Dutch player playing the Mozart concerto very theatrically. When I asked him about his interpretation he just said: "Mozart wrote great opera's, you know"...
Post Edited (2020-08-07 19:40)
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-08-07 21:59
JTJC,
To avoid sinking too deeply into hot water, here are some caveats:
If you are playing the Mozart Concerto today, you can 1) try to give a performance that adheres to the stylistic rules Stadler observed or 2) play it the way the audition committees for the contests, orchestral positions, and colleges and conservatories are used to hearing today, or 3) after studying the editions musicologists present give considerable reign to your own preferences and conception.
Sundqvist evidently opts for the third choice, and plays the Mozart as he wishes, not as a true and correct representation of the stylistic conventions of Mozart's time. He knows the historical manuscripts available for the concerto do not show the articulation or ornamentation that Mozart expected Stadler (or any other competent player of the time) to add, so he adds his own, including his own eclectic approach to rhythm, phrase driving, and accentuation, which turn out to be (as Tony Pay says in a later post) Romantic in style (with just a touch of the Postmodern?) I accept and enjoy Sundqvist's as a performance for an early 21st Century audience with early 21st Century ears (that are still Romantically derivative) and nothing more. At that level, it is at least an exhilarating bit of clarinet virtuosity (as you suggest not unlike Cavallini?) Come to think about it, how would Cavallini have played the Mozart?
Henrik Wiese has produced several editions of Mozart compositions, including
an "Urtext" one (in 2003) of the Mozart Clarinet (Basset Clarinet) Concerto, published by G. Henle Verlag. In 2018 Charles Neidich did an "Urtext" edition for Lauren Kaiser.
Post Edited (2020-08-08 04:44)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2020-08-08 17:24
I think it's worthwhile pointing out that Robert's three choices don't properly capture what is available to a player.
You need to see that the use of 'classical' phrasing, very roughly, translates to 'avoiding the local crescendo within the phrase' – but you can do that by keeping the phrase-shape flat, then giving the illusion of a crescendo by starting the next phrase slightly louder.
What that means is that there is a continuum between 'strongly classically-phrased' playing and 'more sostenuto-like' playing. A player can move from one to the other in the service of the current musical character. They should be doing that anyway, just as they should be modulating the degree to which they show bar-hierarchy.
It's one reason why mastery of classical phrasing is such a powerful tool, and why Sundqvist's performance is effectively monochromatic despite its highly varied palette. I'm not inclined to take him seriously as a Mozart player.
I once had a (rare) student in Spain who understood all of this, and he told me that when coached by another 'master' who kept on insisting on crescendos, he was very often able to give the apparently satisfactory illusion of a crescendo without actually doing one.
This amused him (and me).
MOST people aren't aware of these details – even at the very high level of audition panels:-)
The upshot is that if you are playing to satisfy a 'romantically inclined' audience, you can do so within the style by flattening your phrase shapes. And, if you're playing to this standard, the panel will be interested in you anyway.
Tony
Post Edited (2020-08-08 18:11)
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-08-08 21:10
Tony,
When you teach the Mozart Concerto, do you have an edition (or editions) that you prefer to the 2003 Henrik Wiese (Henle) one? Your advice to avoid crescendos within each phrase is clear, but in the absence of articulation markings in the manuscripts available to us, how do you determine which articulation patterns to use?
Post Edited (2020-08-08 21:23)
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2020-08-08 21:54
I've always said that the best you can do for the solo part is Bärenreiter; but the orchestral material is now better from Breitkopf (page turns, etc.)
Bärenreiter is very thin, but that's what you want.
Here is a thread about choices of articulation that I contributed to. I maintain that one's articulation should support the musical structure, and that that musical structure can very often be deduced by examining the orchestral contribution.
There's a bit at the end about students having to play, not for Mozart, but for stupid people.
Tony
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