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Re: Another Wright question

Author: seabreeze
Date: 2021-08-04 01:26

Bonade's recommendations often carried the day. Marcellus probably got into Cleveland that way. But your characterization of Drucker is unfair. He was a remarkable sight reader, even playing in New York groups that read music from hand written manuscripts. His rhythm was rock solid, and he had the finger technique and articulation speed to play virtually anything. He was a quick study from an early age. Still a teenager, he beat Marcellus in an audition for Curtis. How many other players could have done that? Drucker's performance on Eb clarinet with New York established him as a superb orchestral musician --just right for THAT orchestra. Bernstein picked him for principal because he knew Drucker could be heard easily in that rambunctious New York group. No one ever said that they couldn't hear Drucker! Wright was a perfect fit for the Boston Symphony but he probably would have been lost in the fireworks display of the New York Philharmonic. In a recorded interview, Wright mentions more than once that Boston, unlike New York, was a quiet orchestra with excellent dynamic control. In retrospect, he may have been glad that he wound up in Boston rather than New York.

Stanley Drucker was an amazing player by any standard. His Nielsen was a watershed performance marked by powerful rhythmic drive and fearless surmounting of technical difficulties but also a silken smooth legato over the widest intervals. His career as principal clarinetist in a major orchestra is unmatched for longevity. If he were just a "nanny goat vibrato" player, he would not have survived that many years under that many conductors, including Pierre Boulez. Given the opportunity to record the Nielsen Drucker plunged in and did it in one take, just after he had travelled though freezing weather. No doubt Harold Wright would have explored the Nielsen in more subtle. sophisticated ways, but he never recorded it, and I'm not sure he ever performed it in public (though John Yeh says Wright was a wonderful tutor in helping him play the Nielsen.) There you have the difference. Drucker was a "damn the torpedos full speed ahead" player; Wright was more meditative and poetic. Both found matching orchestras to play in. So what's to complain about?

Post Edited (2021-08-04 01:37)

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