 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2007-01-24 19:30
Woodwind Soiree at Juilliard
Juilliard presented a wonderful, and free, Woodwind Soiree last night in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater. The performers were faculty members plus students. The hall is spanking new, with 700 seats. From the first row of the balcony, the acoustics were perfect.
Festivities began with the Poulenc Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano, played by Nathan Hughes (formerly Met Opera, now principal in Seattle), Judith LeClair (NY Philharmonic principal) and Jonathan Feldman. As you might expect, they gave a zippy performance, perfectly matching the character of the piece. Hughes has a lovely sound and a perfect, rippling technique, LeClair is as good a bassoonist as there is in the world, and Feldman was fully their equal.
Next came Thomas Kessler's Unisono for Three Clarinets, played by Alan Kay, Ayako Oshima and Charles Neidich. It was composed in 1978 and is a quasi-minimalist piece with the three players, as you might expect, in unison most of the way, with more and more diverging elements. At 10 minutes, it didn't outstay its welcome. The notes aren’t particularly hard, but the ensemble and tuning are really challenging. Charles Neidich said it starts out like a Gregorian chant and turns into "a Gregorian chant from the moon." The performance was very fine.
Next was Beethoven's Variations on "La ci darem la mano" from Don Giovanni for two oboes and English horn, played by Elaine Douvas (Met Opera principal), Christopher Gaudi (Met Opera sub) and Pedro Diaz (Met Opera English horn). This is great fun. The English hornist has the chance to steal the show, and Pedro Diaz did very well, but Elaine Douvas is too good to be ignored.
The first half ended with Janacek's Mladi (Youth), performed by the New York Woodwind Quintet (Carol Wincenc, flute, Stephen Taylor, oboe, Charles Neidich, clarinet, Marc Goldberg, bassoon and William Purvis, horn) with Ayako Oshima, bass clarinet. They are, of course, a set group, except for the bass clarinetist, and did it very well. It did sound, though, like they threw it together on only a couple of rehearsals.
The second half began with Glinka's Trio Pathetique, played by clarinetist Alan Kay, bassoonist Frank Morelli and pianist Jonathan Feldman. This is a gorgeous piece, far too seldom performed. I felt modified rapture about the performance, though. Alan Kay swallowed his phrase endings, and though Frank Morelli played beautifully, he and Kay could (should) have matched their phrasing better. As in the Poulenc, Jonathan Feldman was the star of the show, playing one perfect passage after another.
The *very* long concert concluded with the complete Mendelssohn Octet, arranged for double wind quintet by the eminent flutist Samuel Baron. The players were the New York Woodwind Quintet members with top Juilliard students (Lissie Okopny, flute/piccolo, Anna Steltenpohl, oboe, Nicholas Gallas, clarinet, Robyn Jutrys, bassoon and Tainxia Wu, horn).
The arrangement is excellent, but anything like this is a series of compromises. First, Mendelssohn wrote the Octet for a homogeneous ensemble -- a string symphony, not a double quartet. The varying woodwind colors spoiled that character. Also, the voices are constantly handed off. The 1st clarinet has the lead about half the time, and the 1st oboe and flute have the rest. The lead fits perfectly for violin, but it has to be traded off among the winds when it goes too high for the clarinet and too low for the flute or oboe.
Some things didn't work at all. The opening of the finale is seldom comprehensible even on cello, and tossing it back and forth between bassoon and horn made it that much less audible. However, the scherzo went beautifully, at least partly because Baron could use Mendelssohn's own orchestral arrangement (with winds) as a model. However, the fast parts there and in the finale require double tonguing. Charles Neidich does this with great facility, but even he had trouble keeping it on an even keel as the finale got faster and faster.
There was a significant difference between the professionals and the Juilliard kids. It wasn't as much technique as tone character and projection. The students could be just anybody. The pros were individuals. The exception was the clarinetist, Nicholas Gallas, who was phenomenal. Look for him in the future.
The Octet was certainly worth working up and performing, especially in a woodwind concert. However, I’d always prefer to hear it for strings.
Finally, the program notes, by James M. Keller, the NY Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony program annotator, are the best I've ever read. They're copyrighted, so I can't scan and post them, but I may pick out the jewels and post them separately.
Ken Shaw
Post Edited (2007-01-24 19:36)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-01-25 12:41
Thanks for the review!--especially welcome since, on the Klarinet e-mail list, I've been reading with interest the thread of speculation about the woodwind dectet arrangement of the Mendelssohn octet. My husband plays violin in the original octet now and then, when he and his chamber music friends can muster enough people in a large enough living room (not ours!). I've swiped the first violin part off his music stand a couple of times and messed around with it, enviously and not too successfully.
Ken wrote,
>>First, Mendelssohn wrote the Octet for a homogeneous ensemble -- a string symphony, not a double quartet. The varying woodwind colors spoiled that character. Also, the voices are constantly handed off. >>
That's one of the things I'd wondered about. One of the glories of that piece is the first violin's spectacular, sustained passage of eighth notes that begins 43 measures before the end. Did Charles Neidich play that alone? (Circular breathing?) I'd hate to hear that passage broken up among different instruments.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2007-01-26 14:54
Lelia -
I don't remember how the last 43 measures were arranged. Charles Neidich Does circular breathing with the greatest of ease, and he was playing throughout. However, the finale goes quite high, and I'm sure the flutes (and piccolo) jumped in at the end and may have taken over completely.
At that level, the players make those kinds of joints perfectly and modify their tones to match one another. As you may remember, that's one of my pet topics -- see http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=94788&t=94788. The problem is that a wind ensemble has many colors, and a string ensemble has just a few, closely related ones.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-01-27 12:24
In the orginal key, E-flat, those last 43 measures have a range on the violin from d in the first space below the staff up to e-flat three lines above the staff. On clarinet in C, those 43 bars are well within the range. For clarinet in A, transposing into G-flat, the range is from bottom space f up to g-flat four lines above the staff. For clarinet in Bb (the more likely instrument to use for this piece, I would think), transposing into F, it would be f four spaces above the staff--difficult at the lickety-split speed, but certainly do-able for Charles Neidich. (You don't even want to know what I sound like when I try it!--although Shadow Cat probably would be happy to tell you....)
On a clarinet in Bb or C, the challenge isn't so much in the notes as in the speed. The passagework mostly consists of partial scales and intervals of thirds, but there are two bars of octave jumps in alternating eighth notes, presto and usually accelerando mishegosserando in most performances, that would be challenging whether from a C instrument's bottom line e to top space e (then d, then c, then one jump on the b's) or transposed.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2007-01-27 14:06
Lelia -
Charles Neidich played only a Bb clarinet, not that it matters since he could undoubtedly transpose it on the A clarinet into the key of B, twice as fast and without a fluff. Like Drucker, he doesn't have the ordinary human limitations.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-01-27 16:11
>>Like Drucker, he doesn't have the ordinary human limitations.
>>
I've noticed! :-)
Another option, for mere mortals, would be clarinet in E-flat. Hadn't thought of that before, but the lowest note on the violin, open G string, is also the lowest note (E) on an eefer with standard Boehm keywork. In the Presto at the endof the Octet, that high note of e-flat on the fiddle would only be the c two lines above the staff on the eefer.
In the Octet as a whole, the highest note for first violin (and not easy on a violin, btw) or for clarinet in C is a-flat, five spaces above the staff. That's c-flat six spaces above the staff for clarinet in A or b-flat five lines above the staff for clarinet in Bb. Those notes don't appear in that presto section at the end, and they're infrequent elsewhere, but they're exposed, with no place to hide. They have to be decent-sounding notes, not the squeal of the scared pig. On the E-flat soprano, which would put the score in the key of C, the high note would be f four spaces above the staff--which I think most good, college-level eefer players should manage without much trouble.
What's mumbling around in my mind, of course, is the possibility of arranging this piece for a clarinet octet in the original (orchestral) key with uniform tone color and without any handoffs. I don't think it's common to use four e-flat clarinets for a clarinet octet, but since the range of the eefer is essentially the same as the range of the violin, it might make sense--with enough *good* eefer players. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the whole score right now, since my husband only has the first violin part.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2007-01-27 16:19)
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