 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Steve Becraft
Date: 2023-06-23 22:20
Many of you have hopefully heard this recording of Yona Ettlinger performing his arrangement of Pergolesi's Concerto in D major:
https://youtu.be/ZaQG475GZz8
My arrangement of this piece for Clarinet & String Quartet is now available through Alea Publishing!
https://bassclarinet.ecwid.com/Pergolesi-Concerto-in-D-Major-Hard-Copy-p562315117
On August 11, 1978, Yona Ettlinger performed a recital program at the International Clarinet Congress in Toronto that included several arrangements for clarinet and string quartet. Despite publishing other arrangements, including works by Mozart, Rameau, and Schumann, Ettlinger never made the Pergolesi Concerto in D major available. Fortunately for the clarinet community, Mike Getzin and Stephen Clark were in the audience that day! Getzin recorded the recital on reel-to-reel tape, and 38 years later Clark used a copy of this to create a digital version for YouTube.
After hearing Ettlinger’s beautiful sound and exquisite phrasing showcased in his artful arrangement, I became obsessed with playing the Pergolesi composition as well. Without an available publication or even knowing the original solo instrument, I began a years-long search for source material. IMSLP? Naxos Listening Library? YouTube? No help. Along the way, I finally stumbled onto a recording of flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal playing Pergolesi’s “Flute Concerto No. 2 in D major.” Once I had this information, I was able to track down a published version of the concerto for flute and piano to use as a starting point. Using this publication, along with Ettlinger’s live recording, I have attempted to recreate an arrangement as close as possible to what he and the string quartet played that day in 1978.
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Author: nellsonic
Date: 2023-06-24 00:08
I'd love to purchase a version for clarinet and piano were one available.
Anders
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Author: Steve Becraft
Date: 2023-06-24 05:02
Believe me, I thought about making a piano part too! Unfortunately, it was already a big enough project and I simply didn't have the time to go down that path. Depending upon how my life goes over the next few years I might try to get to it.
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Author: nellsonic
Date: 2023-06-24 06:30
I think you would sell significantly more in that form. If you have the string quartet parts in a score in notation software it would seem to be a much simpler project than what you've already done to reduce it to two staves and make whatever minor changes might be needed for it to work well on the piano.
Sorry to beat a sleeping horse, or whatnot. Just advocating for something I've wished for for a long time! Etlinger is such a great clarinetist and this piece is a hidden treasure. We need more really good Baroque solo material.
Anders
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Author: Paul Globus
Date: 2023-06-26 18:07
I was a student of Yona Ettlinger and, eventually, a friend. I recall when he was first arranging the Pergolesi concerto. It was in Paris, where he lived part of the time (he also lived in London).
I never heard him perform the Pergolesi but I did hear him practicing it. By contrast, I was fortunate to hear him perform most of his other arrangements in concert. I was always under the impression that the Pergolesi had been published along with everything else but I guess I was wrong. It makes sense since I have all of his other arrangements in my library but not the Pergolesi.
Yona Ettlinger was a superb musician who just happened to play the clarinet. In this way, he was unique. Few of us can even begin to approach his level of musicianship, which accounts I suppose for the quality of his arrangements. When he would work on a piece, he would study all of the parts, inside out, down to the last detail. If you listen closely to his recordings of, say, the Mozart and Brahms Quintets, you can hear that level of understanding in almost phrase. What a loss that he died so young.
Paul Globus
Post Edited (2023-06-26 18:07)
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Author: Steve Becraft
Date: 2023-06-27 05:36
Thank you for your comments, Paul.
I am thankful that the internet has provided easier access to so many recordings of players like Yona Ettlinger!
Prior to purchasing a few CDs and later seeking him out on the internet, I had only heard his name (favorably) mentioned by Rosario Mazzeo. EVERYTHING that Mazzeo stressed in our lessons--ring and focus in the tone, evenness through the registers, clarity of phrasing--is exemplified in every recording I've heard of Ettlinger.
I agree with your statement 100% that Ettlinger was "a superb musician who just happened to play the clarinet." He must have been a very inspirational teacher and friend!
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Author: Paul Globus
Date: 2023-06-27 18:26
Indeed he was inspirational while also very down to earth. Good sense of humour too. He died at the peak of his powers.
I was reading a (funny) letter he had written to me (this was long before the days of email) when I got the news that he was gone. Talk about shock. To look at him, slim and trim and quite vigorous in his movements, you would never think there was anything wrong with him.
As it is with most players, Yona Ettlinger's recordings don't fully capture the essence of his playing. Those of us who were fortunate enough to hear him up close or on the concert can attest to the beauty of what he used to refer to as a "lifted sound," i.e. a sound with carrying power. This had nothing to do with volume but rather with purity and focus. Combined with his understanding of musical structure and phrasing (Yona also played the piano and studied composition in his youth in Paris with Nadia Boulanger), the effect was truly special.
Last month, Yona's great friend and colleague from the Israel Philharmonic, bassoonist Mordechai Rechtman, passed away; he was 97. Mordechai was another person of towering musical intellect who also happened to play an instrument (and far better than anyone else on the planet). Another irreplaceable loss.
Paul Globus
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Author: Steve Becraft
Date: 2023-06-29 05:00
Thank you for sharing these memories!
And I love his descriptive terminology of a "lifted sound." I haven't heard it described that way before, and it is perfect!
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Author: Paul Globus
Date: 2023-06-29 16:42
I never heard Yona Ettlinger refer to a "dark" or a "bright" sound. Not once. And I'm with you in that I never heard anyone else use his term, lifted.
It's interesting that when you sat next to him when he played, the sound he produced was quite compact (probably not a good word but the best I can come up with at the moment) but as you moved away, it got bigger (again, probably the wrong word for the tonal effect I'm trying to describe). It's almost as if he had some super control over the intensity or concentration of the tone, which increased the further way from the source the sound traveled. In lessons, he put a big emphasis on "more air" so that might be a clue to what was going on in the production of his "lifted" sound.
Paul Globus
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2023-06-29 20:06
Interesting that you say "compact." I had never heard his playin before and have started listening to other examples available on YouTube. I would swear that his sound is an acoustic that could only be accomplished on a German horn. His sound on Boehm is truly as one-of-a-kind as it is beautiful.
................Paul Aviles
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Author: Paul Globus
Date: 2023-06-29 21:49
Yona played on Buffet instruments, R13s as I recall. He had quite a collection given that he was some sort of a paid consultant for Buffet.
I once went with him to the Buffet factory in Nantes where he must have tried about 100 A clarinets in a single afternoon. He left with three or four instruments under this arm to test at home (this was just prior to his RCA recording of the Mozart Quintet with the Tel Aviv String Quartet). He played on a re-faced Selmer mouthpiece (HS **?) and Vandoren reeds (#3 or #3.5). His set up, which I played many times, was lighter than you would expect. I try to emulate it to this day.
A clue to Yona's exceptional sound and control might be something he used to admonish me about quite often. He would tell me to use "more air" but -- and this is the important bit -- to focus the air into the center of the bore. This is a fundamentally different concept than filling the whole bore of the instrument with air. It automatically forces you to support more (whatever that means), even though the idea of focusing the air into the center of the bore doesn't require much in the way of physical changes to the way you play. It's more of a mental thing. I have found over the years that it makes a huge difference. I would encourage everyone to give it a try.
Paul Globus
Post Edited (2023-06-29 22:04)
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