Author: seabreeze
Date: 2015-10-10 23:48
JKL, I buy some of what you are saying, which shows there is no one definitive way to play this solo. But historically you are mistaken in thinking that the 1924 clarinetist plays the solo like a jazz player. Maybe it is a jazz imitation (or more like a "deconstruction") of Klezmer (who knows) but it is far from the way jazz players played in the 1920s or anytime since then. Leon Rapollo (who probably influenced both Goodman and Shaw) would have adopted a much more etherial bluesy sound and dispensed with the throaty articulation.
When Goodman (who was certainly a jazz clarinetist) played the solo with Toscanini he saw no reason to inject any Klezmer into the piece; he played it jazzy (squeak and all) throughout. That performance is on YouTube also. I dont know if Artie Shaw ever played it in a public concert, but just thinking of him playing the 1924 way is enough to make anyone laugh--he wouldn't do it, except as a lampoon. (listen to his "Donkey Serenade, where he plays goofty and out of tune") The same goes for jazz clarinetist Barney Bigard, I should think. (He would do very long upward glisses but the remainder would not not be phrased like the 1924 version, though he might throw in some very smooth downward glisses, of which he was a master).
When Pete Fountain played it, it was "smoothed out" all the way, Irving Fazola (another authentic jazz player) style.
But I must agree that if someone wanted to play the thing with the quasi-Klezmer tonal shadings of 1924 today (if that's what they are) Gershwin would probably be all for that interpretation (even if the kids and I do not find it our cup of tea). Then again, wouldn't Gershwin also approve the Benny Goodman version (sans the squeak) and the Pete Fountain one (with the low register opening note, which Fountain plays an octave up, restored), and the Robert Marcellus one with Louis Lane and John Browning, and the Ricardo Morales one, etc?
Evidently serveral clarinetists were involved in early versions of the solo. Ross Gorman is on the first recording. Not sure who is in the 1930s film (could it even be Gorman again with another interpretation?). Ben Kanter went on tour with the piece playing it with Gershwin every night but not exactly the same way as Gorman. For the Los Angeles premier, Glen Johnston (later well known as a mouthpiece guru and repair tech) played the solo, certainly in his own way as well.
Post Edited (2015-10-11 03:51)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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