Author: seabreeze
Date: 2022-01-09 00:30
Now please don't throw rotten radishes at me, but there is a reason why every author of clarinet methods from Ivan Muller and F. Berr to Klose to Baermann to Stark to Jettel and beyond has included extensive work on scales and arpeggios.
I will say categorically that anyone who has worked through the Baermann scales and arpeggios (first in Book 2 and later in Book 3 of his method) and/or the 416 Progressive Daily Studies for Clarinet by Kroepsch can easily "sight read" the Gade fantasy pieces and encounter no new note combinations or technical problems. In navigating the permutations of harmonic and melodic combinations in Baerman or Kroepsch, the player has already encountered all the fingering problems presented in the Gade and for that matter in most conventionally written tonal music from the 1600s to the 1890s or so and in most conservatively written tonal music even after that. (An obvious exception would be a work by a composer who is simply ignorant of the limitations of the clarinet and therefore incompetent to write for it).
Paradoxically, the agony of practicing all the Baermann and Kroepsch scale and chord combinations results in the joy of playing huge swathes of conventional tonal music with EASE. It is almost like magic. Now even the wizards at maxing out Baermann may find passages they are not prepared to play at sight. Scales and arpeggios are no panacea for overcoming all technical challenges. Daphnis and Chloe still has to be practiced on its own terms, as do The Firebird, Martino's A Set for Clarinet, Ginastera's Variaciones Concertantes, and many other difficult modern pieces. But the Gade, for someone with Baermann and Kroepsch under their fingers, is a walk in the park. Even just working through Book 2 of the Baermann method would fully equip a player to easily get through the Gade. Books 3 and 4 of Baermann would equip them to tackle the Crusell and Spohr Concertos and all the Weber pieces (with a little additional work on the altissimo for the Spohr).
Some players seem to get similar technical control from practicing finger motion technical studies like those in the Klose Method, Baermann Method Book 2, and in the August Perier 331 Daily Mechanical Studies.
Here's a little master class on the Gade: https://clarinet.org/6061.
And an especially beautiful performance of the first of the pieces by Nicholas Pfeffer (below it is another video of Tommaso Lonquich playing the whole set of fantasy pieces. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gade+fantasy+pieces+clarinet+nicholas+pferrer.
Now, feel free to throw things at me.
Post Edited (2022-01-09 08:45)
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