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Re: Leopold Wlach

Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-11-25 02:27

The first classical clarinet playing I ever paid any attention to came from Leopold Wlach's Westminster label recordings of the Brahms Trio and the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, which I heard around the same time as I discovered Louis Cahuzac's Angel label recording of the Hindemith Clarinet Concerto. So I got a "double whammy" of Viennese and French clarinet playing that opened up my ears to just how different the clarinet can sound even in the same genre of music.

Using the "search" feature here brings up 50 hits for Wlach and 21 for the clarinet he used, an old Viennese Koktan. Bill McColl of Washington told me he took lessons from Wlach and measured the Koktan mouthpiece. It had one of the longest and closest facings McColl ever measured, 27.5 mm long and
0.79 mm or less at the tip. Wlach's reeds were equally distinctive. Those were the days when regional differences in clarinet sound were striking and easily recognizable.

Wlach played without a trace of vibrato and was not afraid to take slow movements really slow and relish each moment. I believe the Koktan Wlach played was large bore, and some clarinet makers, such as Rossi, have used that model as a benchmark for designing their own Viennese style instruments. It would be a mistake, however, to characterize Wlach as some sort of hidebound conservative bent on continuing old traditions. Wlach, after all, encouraged Rudolf Jettel to write his very challenging, non-traditional etude books and promoted efforts to update playing technique to accomodate the increasing demands of modern composers. Victor Polatschek, who also played Koktan clarinets and was roughly in the same Viennese tradition as Wlach, also may have been influenced by him to write his well-known Advanced Studies for Clarinet.

Post Edited (2016-11-25 22:28)

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Leopold Wlach new

ruben

2016-11-25 01:11

Re: Leopold Wlach

seabreeze

2016-11-25 02:27