I went to Juilliard yesterday to hear the 1:00 p.m. chamber recital at Morse Hall, the first of three to be given that afternoon. Unfortunately, Juilliard does not release in advance the program details for any of its free student recitals. Listeners therefore need pick a time at random and hope for the best. Luckily for me, the "pot luck" program I ended up hearing was quite satisfactory, featuring as it did works by Dutilleux, Beethoven and Mozart.
The program began with Dutilleux's Sonata for Oboe and Piano (1947), an obscure work I'd never before encountered. It was performed by Lauren Williams, oboe, and Joe Mohan, piano; the piece was coached by Baruch Arnon. This was actually the second time I'd heard Dutilleux's music this season - in October the American Symphony Orchestra performed his Correspondances at Carnegie Hall - and the first chance I'd had to hear any of his chamber works. The sonata was composed for a quite specific purpose. During the post-war period well known composers, among them Messiaen and Jolivet, were commissioned by the Paris Conservatory to create concours competition pieces, i.e., works to be performed by Conservatory students to determine which among them were qualified to receive a diploma. Accordingly, these works were deliberately designed to be as difficult as possible. Dutilleux's sonata seizes on every opportunity, from changes in register to awkward fingerings, to tax the skill of the performer.
The next two works were much more familiar. The first was Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2 (1802). The violinist was Cindy Lin and the pianist Jae Young Kim; the coach was violinist Lara Lev. 1802, the year in which the three Op. 30 sonatas were completed, was of course the same year the Heiligenstadt Testament was written and for that reason the most significant in Beethoven's career as a composer. This was when he stood poised to enter the heroic phase referred to as his Middle Period. Something of the grandeur and drama of the works to come can be seen in this sonata. Except in the playful third movement scherzo, the work is filled with drama right from the turbulent opening of the first movement. From here on, Beethoven gave much more weight to the violin as an equal partner of the piano when composing his sonatas. But he still had not forgotten that he was himself a pianist, and it is this instrument rather than the violin that opens all four movements and introduces the thematic content of each.
After intermission, the program concluded with Mozart's famous Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581 (1789). The five musicians were Hannah Cho and Greg Cardi, violins; Matthew Sinno, viola; Megan Yip, cello; and Zachary Hann, clarinet. Lara Lev was once again the coach. Recently I had a conversation with a clarinetist about the extended range instrument, the bassett clarinet, used by Anton Stadler for whom this work was written. I was surprised to learn that there are relatively few notes in the K. 581 and the Clarinet Concerto, K. 622 that make use of this extended range and that the greater part of each could be played on the traditional soprano clarinet in use today. This would seem to indicate the advertisement for the premiere performance of the Concerto somewhat hyped the instrument's properties.
"Herr Stadler the elder, in the service of his majesty the Kaiser, will play a concerto on the Bass-Klarinet and a variation on the Bass-Klarinet, an instrument of new invention and manufacture of the court instrument maker Theodor Loz; this instrument has two more tones than the normal clarinet."
At any rate, the clarinetist at this performance, as at almost all I've seen, made use of the traditional clarinet without apparently encountering any difficulties. Still, the recording of both pieces that I own and most admire is that performed by David Shifrin in which he does make use of the extended range instrument. Still, this might have more to do with the skill of the performer than with the instrument used.
No comments:
Post a Comment