Contemporary Classics January 30, 2018 Contemporary Clarinet and Oboe

This week we are featuringmusic for the clarinet and oboe – inspired by last weeks conversation withcomposer Jeremy Gill about his two works Serenata Concertante and NotturnoConcertante. 

So tonight we willopen with the  Christopher M. WicksClarinet Sonata #3.  ChristopherWicks is a composer from Silverton Oregon,  He is partial to this work as he composed it on the day ofthe 2017 Women’s March, and it seemed to him that there was good energy in theair, which the piece captured. This piece was premiered in a recital by the clarinetist Sara Truelovegiven at Silverton United Methodist Church last May, with the composer at thepiano.  You will be hearing arecording of that concert.  Christophertold me that “In my sonatas, I like to juxtapose the traditional Classicalformal designs with a less predictable harmonic language.  This piece is dedicated to my friendSara Truelove, who helped me to keep the more tricky parts idiomatic for theclarinet.”  Here is a performanceof Christopher M. Wicks Clarinet Sonata #3 performed live by clarinetist SaraTruelove the composer at the piano.   

Henry Cowell Three Ostinatiwith Chorales: Written in 1937 andpremiered by Robert McBride and Gregory Tucker at Bennington College, inBennington VT on 18 May 1937,  Thescore was copyrighted 1946, Music Press (later Presser Music) as Three Ostinatiwith Chorales for Clarinet and Piano or Oboe and Piano.  But in correspondence between HenryCowell and Robert McBride, Cowell insisted that these pieces were written withthe oboe in mind. The solo part does not utilize the clarinet’s greater range,especially its low Register and the 3rd movement (Chorale 2) has imitationbagpipe skirls that are effective on oboe but not on the limpid clarinet.

Michael Daugherty   Brooklyn Bridge (2005) for SoloClarinet and Symphony Band was commissioned by the International ClarinetAssociation.  The world premierewas given by the University of Michigan Symphony Band under the direction of MichaelHaithcock, with Michael Wayne, solo clarinet, at Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor,Michigan on February 11, 2005. 

Michael Daugherty wrote“Like the four cables of webs of wire and steel that hold the Brooklyn Bridgetogether, my ode to this cultural icon is divided into four movements.  Each movement of the clarinet concertois a musical view from the Brooklyn Bridge: I. East (Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights);II. South (Statue of Liberty); III. West (Wall Street and the lower Manhattanskyline which was once dominated by the World Trade Towers); IV. North (EmpireState Building, Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center).  In the final movement of the concerto,I also imagine Artie Shaw, the great jazz swing clarinetist of the 1940s,performing with his orchestra in the once glorious Rainbow Room on thesixty-fifth floor of the Rockefeller Center.”

 Evan Ziporyn “Four Impersonations”completed in 2000 consists of four movements, all based closely on carefultranscriptions of melodies from other cultures.  Each requires a few particular extended techniques, allexplained in the preparatory notes to each movement.  As described by Evan Ziporyn “In Balinese trance, as in manysimilar traditions throughout the world, subjects are inhabited by specificpeople or entities who speak through them. Their voice remains their own, butthe words they speak are foreign to them, often in ancient or foreign languagesthey themselves do not understand. In these pieces the voices of threedifferent cultures – Japanese shakuhachi (“Honshirabe”), Balinesegamelan (“Pengrangrang Gde” and “Bindu Semara”), and East Africannyatiti (“Thum Nyatiti”) – speak through the clarinet. As a rationalwesterner, I’ve transcribed and translated, found ways to play them, but as atrance subject-wannabe I leave the interpretation to others.”

Press release was dedicatedto and premiered on bass clarinet on 16 March 1992 by Evan Ziporyn inCambridge, Massachusetts.  Versionshave also been written for bassoon and baritone saxophone as well.  David Lang has written:

Gunther Schuller  Duo Sonata:  Duo Sonata  for Clarinet, Bass Clarinet (1949)adopts an early twentieth-century atonal approach in its first two movements.Schuller sets up intervallic gaps and fills them in chromatically in the firstmovement, which is fugal and contrapuntal in design, and triadically in thesecond, which alludes to a Classical homophonic texture. The last movementstrongly suggests a unifying key area with playful arpeggios outlining triadsrelated by semitonal voice-leading. In this recording, the B flat bass clarinetsubstitutes for the A bass clarinet with a transposed part, thus retaining theproper pitch relationships between movements.

Luciano Berio  Sequenza IXa for Clarinet      

The piece begins ratherhesitantly, as if the music were preparing again and again to play a melody,only to remain stuck on a single pitch, held for 10, then 8, then 6 seconds.But the music does slowly gain momentum, the sustained pitches dispelled untilthey reoccur at the end.

Berio says that Sequenza IXfor clarinet is a long melody which, “like almost every melody, includes redundancy,symmetries, transformations and recurrence.”

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  • 7:11pm Default User by Live
  • 7:14pm Christopher M. Wicks Clarinet Sonata #3 by Sara Truelove, clarinet & Christopher M. Wicks, piano on Live recital Silverton United Methodist Church (no label)
  • 7:30pm Michael Daugherty Brooklyn Bridge for Solo Clarinet and Symphony Band:I. East (Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights) by Maureen Hurd, clarinet with William Berz conducting the Rutgers Wind Ensemble on Strange Humors (NAXOS)
  • 7:38pm Michael Daugherty Brooklyn Bridge for Solo Clarinet and Symphony Band: II. South (Statue of Liberty) by Maureen Hurd, clarinet with William Berz conducting the Rutgers Wind Ensemble on Strange Humors (NAXOS)
  • 7:47pm Michael Daugherty Brooklyn Bridge for Solo Clarinet and Symphony Band III. West (Wall Street and the lower Manhattan skyline which was once dominated by the World Trade Towers) by Maureen Hurd, clarinet with William Berz conducting the Rutgers Wind Ensemble on Strange Humors (NAXOS)
  • 7:50pm Michael Daugherty Brooklyn Bridge for Solo Clarinet and Symphony Band IV. North (Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center). by Maureen Hurd, clarinet with William Berz conducting the Rutgers Wind Ensemble on Strange Humors (NAXOS)
  • 8:02pm Evan Ziporyn 4 Impersonations: No. 1, Honshirabe by Evan Ziporyn on This Is Not a Clarinet (Cantaloupe Records)
  • 8:07pm Evan Ziporyn 4 Impersonations: No. 2, Pengrangrang Gede by Evan Ziporyn on This Is Not a Clarinet (Cantaloupe Records)
  • 8:12pm Evan Ziporyn 4 Impersonations: No. 3, Thum Nyatiti by Evan Ziporyn on This Is Not a Clarinet (Cantaloupe Records)
  • 8:14pm Evan Ziporyn 4 Impersonations: No. 4, Bindu Semara by Evan Ziporyn on This Is Not a Clarinet (Cantaloupe Records)
  • 8:23pm David Lang Press Release by Evan Ziporyn on This Is Not a Clarinet (Cantaloupe Records )
  • 8:33pm Luciano Berio Sequenza IXa for Clarinet by Carol Robinson on Berio: The Complete Sequenzas, Alternate Sequenzas (Mode Records)
  • 8:51pm Gunther Schuller Duo Sonata: I. Adagio by Laura Ardan & Theodore Schoen on Clarinet Ensemble Music – Piazzolla, A. – Harbison, J. – Schuller, G. – Persichetti, V (NAXOS)
  • 8:54pm Gunther Schuller Duo Sonata: II. Quarter Note = 60 by Laura Ardan & Theodore Schoen on Clarinet Ensemble Music – Piazzolla, A. – Harbison, J. – Schuller, G. – Persichetti, V. (NAXOS)
  • 8:57pm Gunther Schuller Duo Sonata: III. Allegro by Laura Ardan & Theodore Schoen on Clarinet Ensemble Music – Piazzolla, A. – Harbison, J. – Schuller, G. – Persichetti, V (NAXOS)
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