 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2022-02-05 20:54
Yeah I know there are so many good renditions out there and Frank Cohen is a well known classical player.........what's the point?
I heard Mr. Cohen's rendition on the radio recently and was quite taken by it. It is simply an elegant, musical interpretation. He plays on a standard clarinet but uses more "bassety" musical lines (opposed to the standard interrupted scale version most commonly used on standard clarinet). Cohen also does add ornamentation and kinda does a little improv on repetitive sections (not my favorite approach) but the whole presentation is just so pretty.
I decided to bring this up only because I just then heard a basset recording on the radio the very next day. Maybe because I am from a former generation, I mostly don't find the basset renditions appealing. Someone also suggested that a lot of players, using basset, over play the lower register and that might be a part of what I find obnoxious. But this recording I heard was of Sabine Meyer and she (in my opinion) spectacularly missed the point of Mozart's Concerto completely.
At any rate, here is Frank's version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5PH5lNPxJI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifNOSv1vIzo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKtGY2IX6v4
.................Paul Aviles
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Author: johnwesley
Date: 2022-02-06 00:54
One of if not the best I've heard. He's really fluid and has great feeling. Thanks for sharing.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2022-02-06 00:59
Beautiful performance. It's quite different than what my own imagination makes of this music, but the choices made are interesting and I enjoyed listening. Now to find that Sabine Meyer performance for comparison . . .
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Author: brycon
Date: 2022-02-06 02:22
Quote:
But this recording I heard was of Sabine Meyer and she (in my opinion) spectacularly missed the point of Mozart's Concerto completely.
Do tell: what's the point of Mozart's concerto?
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Author: johnwesley
Date: 2022-02-06 02:36
This live video is excellent. I love seeing him dancing around. When I started on clarinet, the orchestra leader told us it was not proper to move around and we were to sit and play the music as best as possible. Only jazz players could do the jig while playing! And it was uncouth. Franklin Cohen is THE master.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2022-02-06 03:33
Though a point of Mozart's music is beyond my verbal powers to express, I agree with Paul regarding Sabine Meyer's version of the concerto (at least, the version I found on Youtube.) Pretty much throughout that performance I was wincing at things I didn't like. It sounded generally show-offy.
Note, I usually enjoy Meyer's performances: she's a great clarinetist. I also tend to admire technical display, but that works great in some music and poorly in some other.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2022-02-06 03:34
That live video is compelling, vibrant, and spontaneous. Especially the ornamentation in the Rondo from 4:08 to 4:22. Cohen said he aspired to make the clarinet sing like Jesse Norman. Cohen's style takes wings and flies best when he gets to be the conductor. A performance to remember!
Post Edited (2022-02-09 03:45)
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Author: brycon
Date: 2022-02-06 03:42
Quote:
Though a point of Mozart's music is beyond my verbal powers to express, I agree with Paul regarding Sabine Meyer's version of the concerto (at least, the version I found on Youtube.) Pretty much throughout that performance I was wincing at things I didn't like. It sounded generally show-offy.
Note, I usually enjoy Meyer's performances: she's a great clarinetist. I also tend to admire technical display, but that works great in some music and poorly in some other.
Is there something "essential" about Mozart's music that's incompatible with showing off? Or perhaps we're simply ascribing to Mozart's music our own view of things?
It seems to me that everything we know about Mozart as a composer and pianist points towards him being an incomparable show off.
Post Edited (2022-02-06 04:56)
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Author: johnwesley
Date: 2022-02-06 03:52
He was (Mozart that is) the Mick Jagger or maybe Keith Moon of his day. Not stuffy like Beethoven. Just because it's classical music (or as some like to think, legitimate music) doesn't mean you can't have fun with it. Even to the extent of (God forbid) adding a few flourishes of your own. I think Mozart would love to hear and see Sabine and Franklin play his music with happiness in their eyes. Speaking of which, in the live video version the woman behind Franklin playing flute is way too serious. Matter of fact she looks disgusted.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2022-02-06 04:12
Hi brycon. This may be one of those "you're right but I disagree" things.
Mozart expressed many things in his music, and he certainly made much of the performance possibilities available to him. However, even his most florid or even outlandish passages generally embody other dramatic or emotional content along with technical display. Such content in Mozart, and we can refer to the clarinet concerto here, tends to be built into his material with great naturalness, and pouncing on every opportunity to add further emphasis on speed or drama or clarinet sonority seems to lessen something else or throw things off, and, well, I don't like it.
Did Mozart, evidently a show-off, write any pure showpieces? None come to mind. Even something like the Queen of the Night aria, which still stands as a fearsome technical feat for sopranos, is full of other musical import. His music determines the technical display, never the other way around.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2022-02-06 05:03
I really don't like the version that Paul posted. Clearly Frank Cohen is a world-class clarinetist, but his interpretation (as well as that of the Cleveland Orchestra under Dohnanyi) in my opinion totally misses "the point" of Mozart's music. Where is the rhetoric and drama of this wonderful composition? It is all blandly played in a way which doesn't express the meaning of the music at all.
To illustrate:
The C minor (for A clarinet) theme at bar 78 largely resembles a section from the aria with obligato basset horn from Mozart's opera (Non piu di fiori- written around the same time) from La Clemenza di Tito. This moment in the opera describes a highly stressful dilemma in which the protagonist sings the text "Infelice! Qual orrore!". Frank, Christoph and the CO play this section in a technically assured way, but using much the same expressive parameters as they play the rest of the movement. There are so many thematic elements in the 1st movement, which for Mozart would have presumably expressed various other emotional states. Frank's version is well played, but basically boring.
Perhaps this discussion highlights the generalised difference of taste today between the different sides of The Pond?
Post Edited (2022-02-06 05:12)
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Author: brycon
Date: 2022-02-06 06:15
Quote:
Did Mozart, evidently a show-off, write any pure showpieces? None come to mind. Even something like the Queen of the Night aria, which still stands as a fearsome technical feat for sopranos, is full of other musical import. His music determines the technical display, never the other way around.
What does "pure showpiece" mean? At what point does something stop containing "musical import" and become simply a showpiece?
Here's what Mozart himself wrote to his father about his Paris symphony:
Quote:
...in the midst of the first allegro came a passage I had known would please. The audience was quite carried away—there was a great outburst of applause. But, since I knew when I wrote it that it would make a sensation, I had brought it in again in the last—and then it came again, da capo! The andante also found favor, but particularly the last allegro because, having noticed that all last allegri here opened, like the first, with all instruments together and usually in unison, I began with two violins only, piano for eight bars only, then forte, so that at the piano (as I had expected) the audience
said "Sh!" and when they heard the forte began at once to clap their hands. I was so happy that I went straight to the Palais Royale after the symphony, ate an ice, said the rosary I had vowed, and went home.
Doesn't particularly sound as though he's concerned with "naturalness" and "musical import." Sounds to me as though he's drawn upon his technical facility to delight his audience.
Post Edited (2022-02-06 06:16)
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Author: prigault
Date: 2022-02-06 06:41
Not to pour fuel on the fire or anything, but Mike Lowenstern has struck again today, so this is the time to hear Mozart's concerto on the first electric wind instrument with "clarinet" fingerings (at the beginning of this video). Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veaI29oSfE4
Post Edited (2022-02-06 06:43)
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2022-02-06 07:33
Quotes:
"What does "pure showpiece" mean? At what point does something stop containing "musical import" and become simply a showpiece?"
"Doesn't particularly sound as though he's concerned with "naturalness" and "musical import." Sounds to me as though he's drawn upon his technical facility to delight his audience."
. . . . . . .
Oh, Mozart was happy to show off **his** technical facility at composition. In the Paris symphony it was by brilliantly contrasting tempi, dynamics and thematic material to heighten the (rather tongue-in-cheek) drama and to create a delightful resolution. Nowhere in it does the music obviously invite performers to exceed what he had already expressed, though that could be and sometimes is deliberately done. Like all performance choices, the results depend on how well those choices fit in and how well they are executed.
That's different than, for example, Beethoven, who often wrote in technical difficulties for performers to intensify musical effect. He sometimes openly challenged performers, as in the finale of the Les Adieux sonata, marked vivacissimamente, basically "as fast as you can." Yet that's not a "pure showpiece" either; I mention Beethoven because he was closer musically to Mozart, but some later composers took such things much further. Paganini, Liszt, and numerous others wrote plenty of great showpieces expressly to impress listeners with the performers' virtuosity. I don't think Mozart used technical display like that at all.
Liquorice made a good point. The music of the concerto is, to my mind, very operatic, and there are many opportunities for color and drama and flair. Even humor. The music itself suggests those things. However, when I hear someone playing Mozart at really quick tempos and still repeatedly rushing runs passages, or getting expressively cute wherever a piece of a phrase offers a chance, or tossing handfuls of confetti around the gallery at every pause, then to me it gets to sound forced, or at least shallow and less impressive rather than more.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2022-02-06 20:20
Quote:
Oh, Mozart was happy to show off **his** technical facility at composition. In the Paris symphony it was by brilliantly contrasting tempi, dynamics and thematic material to heighten the (rather tongue-in-cheek) drama and to create a delightful resolution.
Sure, but the point I want to make is that if Mozart "the composer" is pleased to show off his technical facility doesn't it stand to reason that Mozart "the pianist" would do the same? Unencumbered of our current modes of specialization, 18th- and early 19th-century performances were often acts of composition and vice versa (think Pierre Zimmermann's compound: pianiste compositeur).
Quote:
Nowhere in it does the music obviously invite performers to exceed what he had already expressed, though that could be and sometimes is deliberately done.
I think in many places Mozart invites performers to exceed what's already there. Look at the slow movement of K. 332 to see Mozart's own ornamentation, which greatly exceeds what's already there. And even aside from ornamentation, 18th-century musical notation is rather sparse. If we stick with what's already there, then, we end up with something rather lifeless in terms of expression.
At any rate, your argument seems to be: "Mozart was very good, so much so that even his virtuosic stuff is still good music." Sure, fair enough. But the implicit argument here I'm pushing back against is that: "Serious music is good and virtuosic music is bad." The view that music should be a transcendental experience of the mind and that anything pulling us back to the physical, namely virtuosity, should be avoided is a 19th- and 20th-century way of looking at things. And what it leads to, as I see it, is treating Mozart as though it were an impotent expression of elegance and refinement, as though it were a musical faberge egg, and not as something full of drama and rhetoric and possessing the ability to shock us out of our collective stupor and force us to the edges of our seats.
In terms of clarinet playing, the 20th-century view of things leads us to prefer above all clarinet playing "as such": one ought to play legato, sostenuto, with "ping" in the sound, with a consistent tempo, phrasing across the bar line, and so forth. Everything loses its particularity: Mozart sounds like Schumann sounds like Brahms sounds like Debussy and players all sound more or less the same (though perhaps with varying degrees of legato, sostenuto, ping in the sound, etc.)
So why not let the particularity of the music affect the clarinet playing? If Mozart lived in the world of Italian opera, why not play the clarinet with a sense of drama, theatricality, and virtuosity? Because with the alternative, as Liquorice noted, music becomes pretty boring.
Post Edited (2022-02-06 20:23)
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Author: Tom H
Date: 2022-02-06 23:56
Great playing. I usually play it a bit faster. I'm just not the philosopher some are. Too much time in Canada's sub-arctic away from everything I guess.
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Musicnotes product no. MNO287475
Post Edited (2022-02-06 23:57)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2022-02-07 00:09
I don’t want to disturb the healthy debate of others, but I feel a need to clarify my opinion. Claes Oldenburg said, “Art is what sits in its ass in a museum.” Classical music struggles from time to time to avoid this same critique. So I realize we as interpretive artists must struggle with staying relevant AND presenting the great art of the past in a respectful way.
Two stories:
Back in school (some forty years ago a cellist asked my opinion on what cadenza to use with her presentation of a Haydn concerto, a good old robust cadenza in the style of the period OR a fairly modern one with modern harmonies that fully showed off her technique (a fairly common practice back then). I advised to do the former, she chose the latter.
In a biographical movie on Herbert von Karajan, the Rostropovich recording of Strauss’ Don Quixote was addressed. The cello represents the voice and character of an emotionally torn man with a questionable grasp on reality. Rostropovich began playing in a manner consistent with that portrayal and Karajan stopped and asked what he was doing. He explained his approach and Karajan said, “But you can’t play it that way, it must be beautiful.”
These stories illustrate where I sit on the issue of interpretation.
………….Paul Aviles
Post Edited (2022-02-07 00:11)
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Author: JTJC
Date: 2022-02-07 01:08
I’m not sure it’s worth arguing about Cohen’s approach or performance. So often we find a leading clarinet player offered as some sort of paragon of performance, style, insight etc. Yes, they are the well trained pupils of the previous generation of masters and are master players themselves. However, rarely can we (or should we) attribute to them the musical insight necessary to expose the true meaning of a particular piece or composer. Most often, in the final analysis, they are really unremarkable. We expect too much from them because of their skill, position, fame etc. Not every principal clarinet of a local, regional, state, national orchestra, no matter how revered, is worthy of identification as the last word on a piece.
Who can say what Mozart might have preferred, whatever the clues, from whatever source. By all means take account of the clues, but we can’t really be certain of our theory. Regardless of what others say, do we enjoy a performance and want to explore it more, or are we really not bothered whether we hear it again? Those seem, to me, to be the criteria we need to consider.
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Author: johnwesley
Date: 2022-02-07 04:28
After rejoining the forum recently, I'd forgotten through the years of absence just how comical and at times maddening it can be. I attribute it to academics and analytical overthinking what should be a pleasant experience. Music is to be enjoyed not picked apart. I can't help but wonder what this concerto would sound like using the instruments of the day. I would imagine the clarinetist would be amazed at just how much the instrument has advanced since the days of Mozart's life. How they'd love to have the flexibility to really express the notes written. Even some that Mozart forgot to write into the score. Makes it interesting and I bet Old Wolfgang would enjoy hearing people play his works with feeling from deep within.
As a rock and roll guy from the 60s, I think of Pete Townshend's "Tommy". A rock opera? Yeah. So well written that when played by the London Symphony Orchestra it does indeed fit the "classical" genre. And such good music that some bluegrass band (I forget their name) recorded "Tommy" using mandolins, banjos, washboards, etc. It was fantastic. Don't think Townshend minded a bit, but was probably taken aback that it was his music played with "hillbilly" instruments!!!
What a concept. While on the subject, drummer Keith Moon was asked once about his playing style and he said it was his way of adding what Townshend forgot.
Bottom line....listen, and enjoy.
Post Edited (2022-02-07 04:45)
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2022-02-07 04:49
Hi brycon. I agree about the K.322 piano sonata. In fact, I agree pretty well with your whole including comment. Still, Mozart, while a fine pianist, didn't write many technically challenging piano parts, compared to, say, Clementi. (Mozart wrote to his sister and told her to avoid playing Clementi because it would harm her playing.) Some of his piano scores do have difficulties, to be sure, but in many cases it was the music that was difficult or complex, so the technical demands became necessary.
Scholarship aside, things can boil down what's difficult to profitably discuss: personal taste. In Mozart's music the line between boring and engaging is very fine, as is the one between tasteful and vulgar. Those lines aren't nailed down either, they move around in people's minds as their lives change and their experience grows. Any performer must try to find a good way to position their interpretation so listeners are engaged and enjoying it. If they can't, it's not the listener's fault (and not Mozart's.)
Not many years ago I would have probably judged Frank Cohen's version of the concerto as boring, and back then I did in fact enjoy hearing Sabine Meyer's playing of it. A lot of music has been through my ears since then. My opinions have changed. My own (private!) way of playing the music has changed a lot too, and it's full of idiosyncrasies that others would presumably find annoying. But I wouldn't dream of using it to show people my own technical facility, not then, not now. In some other music, yes.
Since you mentioned K.332, it's ironic that one of my favorite performances of that contains choices that sound like they would match my previous critique of "show-offy" playing. Such things can work, but they're so close alongside what doesn't. Well, the music says it better than words can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ2gFIXtgXk
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Author: brycon
Date: 2022-02-08 06:07
Quote:
Scholarship aside, things can boil down what's difficult to profitably discuss: personal taste. In Mozart's music the line between boring and engaging is very fine, as is the one between tasteful and vulgar. Those lines aren't nailed down either, they move around in people's minds as their lives change and their experience grows. Any performer must try to find a good way to position their interpretation so listeners are engaged and enjoying it. If they can't, it's not the listener's fault (and not Mozart's.)
Absolutely! "You like what you like." And I actually rather like Frank's and Sabine's playing, both of which have inspired me for many years.
But if you're going to presume to speak for Mozart and say a great artist like Sabine Meyer "spectacularly misses the point of Mozart completely," you gotta back it up. What's the point of Mozart? How does she miss it? etc. Otherwise, it's just the clarinet version of Skip Bayless shouting B.S. out into the void.
Quote:
Since you mentioned K.332, it's ironic that one of my favorite performances of that contains choices that sound like they would match my previous critique of "show-offy" playing. Such things can work, but they're so close alongside what doesn't. Well, the music says it better than words can.
With regard to changing tastes, the fantastic YouTube channel Early Music Sources has a great video comparing old and modern recordings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFPW9ENtNKA&t=1111s
It's very interesting to hear that good taste, refinement, or whatever you want to call it is, in many cases, simply whatever's the dominant way of doing things at the moment.
Post Edited (2022-02-08 06:17)
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2022-02-08 09:00
That's obvious "brycon," Sabine Meyer's rendition is simply NOT beautiful. She chooses to make it brash and over the top. Just listen to it again. Pretty obvious. I'm not saying she is a bad clarinetist, on the contrary most everything else she does is quite wonderful.
.............Paul Aviles
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Author: brycon
Date: 2022-02-08 17:35
Quote:
That's obvious "brycon," Sabine Meyer's rendition is simply NOT beautiful.
More clarinet Skip Bayless. Saying something is or isn't beautiful is a matter of opinion. It's a conversation ender: "Well, I like what I like." And if you like what you like, fine. But if you're going to make an assertion of the truth that something's "missing the point of Mozart," use your brain and back it up, like Liquorice and Philip very astutely did above.
Post Edited (2022-02-08 18:51)
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2022-02-09 00:34
-"I’m not sure it’s worth arguing about Cohen’s approach or performance"
-"Music is to be enjoyed not picked apart"
I think that anybody who is passionate about something, whether they be an amateur, a student or a professional, will very likely be interested in engaging in discussion and comparison of various aspects of that thing which they are passionate about. Just look how many discussions there are here about equipment! Interpretation is also an aspect of "clarinet", and if we can't discuss it here, then where can we discuss it?
I tried to be respectful in my previous post, stating that it was my personal taste and my opinion. I also tried to back that opinion up with a concrete example. There were inputs by others, with much thought behind them, references to other pieces, other interpretations, changing tastes etc. I think some people will definitely find these discussions interesting. If you don't find it interesting you can of course move on, just as I do when I see yet another discussion about the best ligature.
John Wesley wrote: "I can't help but wonder what this concerto would sound like using the instruments of the day."
There are several available versions recorded on reconstructed instrument s of the day. I would be happy to provide links if you are interested.
Paul Aviles: which recording by Sabine Meyer are you referring to? She's played this piece more than a few times in her life! Can you provide a link? And perhaps comment on specific places where you find her playing "brash and over the top"? What's obvious to you isn't necessarily obvious to the rest of us, but I'd be happy if you could explain some more.
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Author: donald
Date: 2022-02-09 04:52
A quick thought, Sabine Meyer has played the Mozart Concerto so many thousands of times I can really imagine her needing to try it different ways, maybe go on a "flight of fancy" or do something a little audacious...
Btw a few years back Frank Cohen played the Mozart Concerto with a wind octet accompanying him here in NZ, and I was privy to rehearsals etc. I honestly have little recollection of his interpretation, but wanted to mention the slightly irrelevant detail that he performed on a "franken-clarinet" (an A clarinet that was a top joint and bottom joint from different instruments and models... I THINK the top joint was Buffet Vintage, but might be wrong).
I played for him in a masterclass (the organiser was embarrassed at the low level of students playing, and asked me to play some more advanced repertoire at the last minute, quite stressful actually) and was very impressed. He immediately zeroed in on one of my shortcomings (that is both technical and musical) and was really quick to demand articulation that was more fluid and followed musical phrasing rather than being machine like.
It was a very worthwhile experience.
dn
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