As it has come to be known nowadays, the clarinet is one of the youngest “classical” instruments present in the “classical” symphony orchestra. Despite having a shorter history than that of other wind instruments, it has, nevertheless, elicited the unconditional enthusiasm of composers throughout the last three centuries, prompting the creation of extraordinary masterpieces both in solo and chamber music repertoires. In comparison with other winds, one of the undeniable fortes of the clarinet is its extremely extended range, which covers a spectrum far exceeding that of many other instruments thanks to the variety of its registers. This feature, together with the ductility of its timbre and with its possibilities in terms of dynamics and articulation, potentially makes the clarinet the perfect candidate for an unaccompanied repertoire. However, the problem with unaccompanied monodic instruments lies in the aural result which might be too homogeneous upon hearing, thus lacking the variety required.
Yet, this is not a challenge for the clarinet since it can be considered as being many instruments all in one under certain aspects. Notwithstanding this, the unaccompanied clarinet repertoire was slow in taking off. Before the twentieth century, in fact, only two works were written for the clarinet alone, namely Anton Stadler’s Trois caprices pour clarinette seule (1810: Stadler was a legendary clarinetist) and Gaetano Donizetti’s Studio Primo, eleven years later. It was only with Igor Stravinsky’s composition of Three Pieces for Clarinet Alone in 1919 that composers’ attention was drawn to the potentials of this instrument, and to the wide-ranging field it offered to its explorers. This further marked another important transition: this time not perforce bound to the repertoire for unaccompanied clarinet, but rather expanded to that for the solo clarinet. Most clarinet music composers in the nineteenth century (with a few notable exceptions, such as Weber or Brahms) had been clarinet players themselves, wishing to broaden their repertoire for the main purpose of demonstrating their virtuoso skills and their bravura.
Thus, the main genres in the production of the clarinet literature are opera transcriptions, paraphrases or potpourris, and variation cycles or fantasias, where a variety of different technical approaches could be tried out and showcased to the audience. By way of contrast, most twentieth-century clarinet music composers were not clarinet players themselves. They were “typical” composers who had fallen in love with the clarinet’s timbre and possibilities, and thus wished to probe all of its resources. Of course, they needed to seek the advice of virtuoso clarinetists who could try out their works, demonstrate new techniques, and be drawn by the composer into hitherto untested territories and uncharted lands.
This Da Vinci Classics CD explores unaccompanied clarinet works written by several European composers during the twentieth century. The album was originally conceived as a pedagogical need. The solo artist of this recording, Alfredo Vena, was expected to provide a repertoire and model performances of a collection of works for unaccompanied clarinet for educational purposes. At the Conservatory where he teaches, students are required to prepare one such work for their graduation exam. Accordingly, there was a very much felt need on Vena’s side to offer his students a selective choice from a rich range of representative works which they could be able to explore. As an artist himself, Vena also manifested the desire to delve more deeply into a repertoire offering manifold opportunities. This repertoire, in fact, allows students and professional clarinetists alike to practice and perform it by capturing the different twentieth-century nuances that it is able to offer. Contributing a new publication within a discographic panorama which is still far from having reached its fullness, is therefore a praiseworthy undertaking as it allows the listener to learn about and appreciate “new” works.
The present collection is made up of pieces which generally belong to the second half of the twentieth century. In his choice, the artist has consistently decided not to embrace works which go beyond the traditional playing styles of the clarinet, nor adopt too harsh a kind of serialism. Dodecaphony, however, is not missing within the repertoire recorded here. The programme may, in fact, be divided into three sections: firstly, there are three works by Italian composers; these are then followed by pieces written by Eastern European composers who actually do make use of serialism, albeit rather sparsely herein; finally, the listener will find three works by British composers, whose style compares favourably with that of other great composers for this instrument.
As its subtitle suggests, this album represents an “introspective journey” in which loneliness, as the sense of isolation embodied by the solo clarinet, primarily represents the ideal condition for introspection. Being Alone is thus here not simply taken to be an existential condition for which some sort of survival strategies need to be adopted. All the composers represented in this recording rather show how sound comes forth out of the silence surrounding it, and the ways in which introspection and soul-searching arise from silent contemplation. Hence, Vena’s intent herein is to consider the variety of colours and timbres enabled by the clarinet and to exploit the full palette made available to both the clarinetist and the composer. In some cases, this exploration appears easier and more enjoyable for performers thanks to the consideration a composer/clarinetist shows for their needs. While the nineteenth century was the realm of clarinetists/composers, their number significantly decreased in the following century. Nonetheless, there were still some excellent musicians whose performance skills supported their quest for new effects, sounds, and techniques on their instrument.
A case in point is Giacomo Miluccio who served as Principal Clarinet at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. The composer was, indeed, a performer, a valued pedagogue, and a creator of music. He managed to fully integrate these three roles, thus developing a personality whose works are highly worth reappraising. His output mirrors his threefold activity, and the works he wrote for pedagogical purposes demonstrate total mastery of the instrument’s most concealed capabilities, as well as a laudable tendency to create educational works of charming beauty. In particular, his Rhapsodie has become a landmark of the international clarinet repertoire. The piece focuses on the singing melody it proposes. Its musical style is reminiscent of traits found in the music of Debussy and of Shostakovich; the timbral and technical capabilities of the clarinet are thoroughly explored, and hints of Orientalism are found here and there. Belonging by definition to a free genre, this Rhapsodie takes all the liberties needed in order to convey the magic of an unaccompanied melos.
By contrast, Nino Rota was an acclaimed composer both in the field of film music and in that of the classical repertoire; his scores for movies directed by Fellini and Visconti were epoch-making. The curiously titled Lo spiritismo nella vecchia casa derives its name from an eponymous work (a theatrical piece) by Ugo Betti. Rota magnificently manages to find the way to create ghostly sounds. Probably influenced by his own activity as a film music composer, Rota turns the literary suggestions into a tale of sounds, each depicting a specific suggestion. The originality and boldness of this work may be sought in Rota’s unconventional and unbridled attitude toward the musical establishment. At his time, the Western musical world was dominated by the most radical experiments of the avant-gardes, but Rota firmly refused to abide by a kind of diktat forcing him to abjure his own language. By going back to antiquity, albeit through the lens of modernity, Rota successfully managed to create, maintain, sustain and support a new style, which is easily recognisable as his own unique one.
Similar traits are found in the works of the other two Italian composers included in the album. The Improvviso by Agostino Gabucci is an example of “performative” composition, whereby performance needs were responsible for shaping the entire work. Its most memorable compositional trait, in fact, is the use of different kinds of clarinets in order to reach a paradoxical unity through diversity. Each movement is scored for a different clarinet, but the overall performance does not lack consistency nor cogency.
A similar quest for variety in unity is found in the famous and complex Monologue op. 157 by Ernst Krenek. Written in 1956, this work mimics the structure of a traditional, multi-movement Sonata. As was usual for him, the composer did not eschew the presence of dodecaphonic passages, but always did so in a very personal manner. Avant-garde composers tended to apply their compositional schemes in a rather rigid fashion, whereas Krenek employed dodecaphony as yet another colour on his palette, juxtaposing it to seemingly opposing musical worlds such as that of jazz. The result, however, is a piece harsher in tone than the others, with a certain preference for timbral homogeneity.
Csaba Deak’s Sonatina for Solo Clarinet is a relatively less known piece, at least in Italy, and so Vena deemed that it well deserves to be more widely known. Born and educated in Hungary, Deak later emigrated to Sweden where he had a long career as composer and pedagogue with a particular focus on winds. The three movements of his Sonatina move beyond the boundaries of the traditional Sonata genre they mirror, and reinterpret it through the lens of modernity.
Also, in Gordon Jacob’s Five Pieces for Solo Clarinet a gaze at the past is not missing. This occurs explicitly in the central piece, Homage to JSB, where the figure of Bach is overtly invoked. This movement is the most Neoclassical one, showing how the composer’s style becomes purposefully anachronistic. Soliloquy, instead, is the piece which most clearly evokes the idea of “Alone”, as this album is entitled: it is an intimate piece, which summons a hint of despair in order to be fully appreciated.
The whole palette of the clarinet’s resources is once more brought to the fore in Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy for B-flat Clarinet, a piece which was commissioned to the artist by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra which adopted it as a competition piece. Particularly noteworthy is the presence of quick arpeggiations and of unforeseen, contrasting changes in the dynamics of its scoring.
Finally, Paul Harvey’s Three Etudes on Themes of Gershwin, written in 1975, are brilliant solo works, conceived with the purpose of technical advancement in mind, but whose musical inspiration is found in three beloved songs by George Gershwin. Their scoring requires, rather than merely allowing, great expressive freedom; they positively challenge the performer who finds unusual delight in playing them.
Altogether, the pieces in this original album invite us to enjoy a varied and complex programme, which, in turn, encourages its listeners to develop a novel appreciation of the resources of this “lonely” instrument.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2023
Alone: An introspective journey through the Clarinet’s different nuances in 20th-century Europe
