Author: brycon
Date: 2015-08-03 04:13
Quote:
Again, the suggested pieces are all good repertoire choices - until, at last for me, you attach a descriptor of contemporary or modern or adventurous to them. I haven't played solo recitals in years and am out of touch with the most recent trends and compositions, but I wonder what experienced soloists or students playing university solo recitals are playing that is truly contemporary - say less than 25 years old?
The Boulez and Carter works are now standard "contemporary" repertoire (they're no longer new, though). From the same era, Milton Babbitt has an absolutely beautiful solo clarinet piece as well as a piece for two clarinets and soprano. Mantovani's Bug gets played fairly often in recitals, as does Widmann's incredibly cheeseball Fantasie. The Donatoni and Denisov solo works are now quite standard (though like the mid-century modernists, they're not really new).
Sciarrino, Grisey, and Marc Andre all have some nice solo clarinet pieces. Lindberg, Ades, and Golijov have some "safer" chamber pieces (Golijov's works are especially safe). Really, almost every living composer has a piece for clarinet; a student could just go through the websites of publishers and universities and easily find something.
Most students, unfortunately, shirk the contemporary music requirement and play something like Poulenc, the aesthetic of which is far less modern than, say, Berg's pieces, which were composed a half century earlier. Or they play one of those Kovacs homages, which are imitations of previous (and far more interesting) composers.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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