Do I hear a clarinet?

Here, more or less, is where we're going to wind up
[I know I sometimes (or maybe often!) keep it to myself -- make it a little surprise! -- where we're headed, musically speaking, but not this time. -- Ken]

i. Allegro [no exposition repeat]
ii. Adagio [at 9:07]

Keith Puddy, clarinet; Gabrieli Quartet (Kenneth Sillito and Brendan O'Reilly (probably, but possibly Claire Simpson), violins; Ian Jewel, viola; Keith Harvey, cello). Classics for Pleasure-EMI, recorded in the U.K., released 1970

But this is where our story -- and there is a little story -- starts

Wait, the saxophone's a Woodwind Family member? Hmm . . . okay, sorta.

But really, at the moment it's just two Family members we're interested in.

Duo in C for Clarinet and Bassoon --
i. Allegretto
ii. Larghetto sostenuto [at 3:49]
iii. Rondo: Allegretto [at 5:58]

Members of the Melos Ensemble of London. EMI-Warner Classics, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, October 1969

by Ken

Yes, yes, Ives and all of that. I'm still trying to make the transition from "Ives the easy way" to "Ives the hard way," moving from the Second to the Third Symphony, with a dip into the violin-and-piano sonatas (and maybe the string quartets?); with the Fourth Symphony and the Concord Piano Sonata looming on the horizon. Though I've also been wondering whether we oughtn't to go back to the First Symphony, so often dismissed as merely Ives's "student" symphony.

Anyway, in some fashion yet to be worked out, that's all coming!

Meanwhile, there was this EMI "double fforte" double-CD set that somehow found its way to a sitting-around-doing-nothing situation. But before we continue with our "little story," a challenge: your best guess (unless you know, in which case it's not much of a challenge, is it?) at to whether --

the charming little clarinet-and-bassoon duo we just heard is by: (a) Haydn, (b) Mozart, (c) Beethoven, (d) Schubert, (e) Schumann, (f) Brahms, (g) somebody else.

SO, LET'S PROCEED WITH THE "LITTLE STORY" --

It all started with this lovely two-CD EMI reissue of performances by the Melos Ensemble, now more usually known as the Melos Ensemble of London, to distinguish itself from the string quartet that, in the latter part of its remarkable 40-year run (1965-2005), similarly took to calling itself the "Melos Quartett Stuttgart" -- estimable musical troupes that had no connection other than the word "Melos," which apparently aroused a certain amount of international confusion. I see from the price tag that I paid $3.99 for my second-hand copy, and what a bargain that was! If you see it at an affordable price, grab it!

Oh yes, the story. At any given moment, you have to understand, I'm apt to have upwards of a zillion CDs off the shelves for blogposts in progress or under contemplation, hopelessly cluttering my desk environment until I summon the resolve and stamina to undertake reshelving. To add to the confusion, nothing stops the zillion itinerant CDs from secreting themselves in clever hiding places, which is what happened with the Melos Ensemble set, which was found idling behind a nightstand. It must have been out for a post either written or contemplated (damned if I can recall which, though); the point is, it really needed to be reshelved, to be available for further service should the occasion arise. So I set it down somewhere, making a mental note that it really should be reshelved -- um, sometime soonish.

For a certain period of time, then, it resurfaced occasionally, each time occasioning the same mental note (gotta reshelve it!), until one time when the thought occurred, You know, this would be a great thing to listen to sometime when I'm trying to think of something to listen to, especially at those late-night hours when apartment life makes chamber music a good choice. And in a certain additional amount of time, I made good on this thought, with the additional thought of starting not with CD 1 but with CD 2.

You see, the more than two and a half hours' worth of music lovingly poured into this set includes a number of "big" works: the kindred E-flat major Piano-and-Winds Quintets of Mozart and Beethoven; the Brahms Clarinet Quintet; the more modest Beethoven Sextet (for two horns and strings), Op. 81b; and a couple of shortish but still substantial -- though very different -- works by Schumann, the Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces) for clarinet and piano, Op. 73, and the Märchenerzählungen (Fairy Tales) for clarinet, viola, and piano, Op. 132. But there's also an interspersed sprinkling of short works , hardly surprising given that the raison d'être for the Melos Ensemble since its founding in 1950, with a core of a dozen players including a quartet of strings, an assortment of winds, plus a pianist and harpist, has been to give hearing to a vast repertory of music for, well, odd combinations of instruments, using not just the core players but all manner of guest artists.

And the short works, while perhaps not long on musical depth, all have something to say, or rather sing, to us. Like, for example the Duo in C for clarinet and bassoon we heard atop the post, which leads off CD 2, and which I'm not sure I'd ever listened to before! Here it is again, more properly identified:

BEETHOVEN (attrib.): Three Duos for Clarinet and Bassoon, WoO 27: No. 1 in C:
i. Allegretto
ii. Larghetto sostenuto [at 3:49]
iii. Rondo: Allegretto [at 5:58]

Members of the Melos Ensemble of London: Gervase de Peyer, clarinet; William Waterhouse, bassoon. EMI- Warner Classics, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, October 1969

So, as regards the little "challenge" with which we began, it might seem that the composer is (c) Beethoven, except for that tendentious "attrib." Just because it doesn't sound much like Beethoven doesn't mean that it couldn't be. Beethoven, after all, wrote a lot of music earlier in his career which doesn't necessarily sound much like Beethoven to us. For a long time these little clarinet-bassoon duos seemed credibly enough Beethoven to hold onto the number they'd been assigned among the Beethoven Werke ohne Opus (works without opus).

Alas, for some time now the wise folk who police such matters have seemed generally agreed that Beethoven didn't actually write the WoO 27 duos. As far as I know, no alternative creator has been persuasively advanced. Whoever wrote them, the C major Duo is utterly charming, and repays the attentions of such formidable players as Gervase de Peyer and William Waterhouse. It sounds like they had a swell time recording it.


ALL BUT 17½ MINUTES OF THE CDs' 152-PLUS
INCLUDES OUR INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE DAY

At 24, in 1950, Gervase de Peyer (1926-2017) was a founding member of London's Melos Ensemble; from 1956 (age 30!) till 1973 he was principal clarinet of the London Symphony; and in 1969 on this side of the Atlantic he became a founding member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Yes, the career of the great English clarinetist (don't be fooled by the name!) was as remarkable for the range of his technical command, artistry, and accomplishments as it was for sheer longevity, and it's probably not accidental (not to mention incidental) that of the 10 works included on these CDs, Gervase plays in all but the Beethoven Sextet for two horns and strings, Op. 81b. All those virtues are well displayed in the spunky C major mini-duo.


ON CD 2, AFTER THE DUO COME THE SCHUMANN PIECES

And here's Gervase, oh, a few years later.

Since I was only half-listening the day I put on the Melos CD 2, I didn't take much note of the Fantasiestücke but paid more attention to the Märchenerzahlungen, which for all their outward fairy-tale simplicity are chock full of Schumann's stock-in-trade structural intricacies, as we're going to learn in a moment. So although my plan here was to focus on Melos Ensemble performances, I found myself gathering a few others.

Let's travel back in time to February 1967, an eventful month in our little story. Quite coincidentally, we have performances from that month from both sides of the Atlantic, and it was also the month of the final performances of one of the century's more imposing musical institutions, the Budapest String Quartet, which is germane to our little story because our first performance of the Märchenerzählungen, the American one, a boldly free-wheeling one, seems clearly imbued with the personality of the great violist Boris Kroyt, best known as the violist of the Budapest Quartet since 1936.

By this time Kroyt [right] had established himself as a major presence at the Marlboro Music Festival, where he was mentoring a string quartet he imagined inheriting the mantle of the Budapest, even suggesting (so the story goes) its name, borrowed from a quartet he had once played in: the Guarneri. In this performance at the Library of Congress, a venue exceedingly familiar to Kroyt from the many years in which the Budapest was in residence there. He's joined by two Marlboro colleagues. In 1967 that singularly songful clarinetist Harold "Buddy" Wright, still several years away from his legendary 1970-93 tenure as principal clarinet of the Boston Symphony, was himself a fellow Washingtonian, as principal clarinet of the National Symphony. Filling out the trio was a 19-year-old pianist who'd made a deep impression on Kroyt at Marlboro. We would be hearing a lot more from Murray Perahia.

Meanwhile in London, our Melos team, featuring another founding member of the ensemble, violist Cecil Aronowitz, so familiar from his frequent collaborations with the Amadeus Quartet and other distinguished musicians, is offering a lighter, quicker account, in which the the players seem to be listening to each other with almost surreal attention, carrying over phrasings from one instrument to another with evident delight -- and Gervase is demonstrating that he can switch in an instant from any kind of clarinet sound to any other kind, and similarly at a moment's notice strike any mood without needing any transition. An exhilarating performance.

Next we hear Buddy Wright [left] a few years farther along, as he was taking up his post in Boston, delivering a performance both sleek and introspective, in partnership with rising-star violist Nobuko Imai and the great critic and notable pianist Harris Goldsmith. The performance, which along with appropriate lightness has some welcome weight, is from an LP of Schumann "Fanfares and Fantasy Pieces" that H.G. recorded, with the participation of Imai and Wright in some of the works. (The recording was released the year before I got to know Harris as his editor at High Fidelity, and I remember how pleased he was with the record, not least for the collaboration of such sterling artists.)

Finally, from a four-LP Classics Record Library set of Schubert and Schumann chamber works performed by Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center artists, we have Gervase now reinvented as a New Yorker, partnered by another CMS founding member, the outstanding violist Walter Trampler (1915-1997), and another CMS veteran, the still-going-strong pianist Richard Goode (born 1943).

ABOUT THE MÄRCHENERZÄHLUNGEN --

Naturally, Harris Goldsmith wrote a liner note for his Schumann LP, from which I've pulled out the most relevant chunks:

. . . Schumann is still considered a great composer. His reputation, though, has tarnished. One hears a lot of equivocation and fault-finding: with hindsight knowledge of his dismal end in an insane asylum, it is all too easy to imagine in the music a diffuseness and ineptitude that isn't there. . . .

The allegation that Schumann's late music suffered from his mental condition is best dealt with by considering the evidence itself. Certainly such a work as the Märcheneerzählungen (Fairy Tales), which dates from October 1853 -- just weeks before the final breakdown -- ought to be thoroughly disjunctive. Lo and behold! The music is bubbly, happy and utterly succinct -- patently the product of a brilliant and orderly mind. Ostensibly cast in four highly dissimilar movements, this little suite is actually unobtrusively unified by a dual leitmotif, which is heard from the viola at the outset. Sometimes the recurrent figurations are altered beyond immediate recognition -- as in No. 2, when the second one furnishes a sturdy bass line in retrograde form.

The opening movement is an ebullient little charmer punctuated by an ostinato of scampering 32nd notes, the second a sturdy German march. The high spot, for me, is the slow movement -- a love duet between clarinet and viola (with piano acting as chaperone!). The finale is the most problematical to bring off in performance. Perhaps Schumann did miscalculate a bit here when he interspersed those rather sparse, witty arpeggios in the clarinet and viola with massive, soloistic chordal writing for piano. Once the by no means insurmountable hurdles are overcome, this athletic, even slightly ferocious, movement provides a vigorous, romping conclusion.

SCHUMANN: Märchenerzählungen (Fairy Tales), Op. 132:
i. Lebhaft, nicht zu schnell (Lively, not too fast)
ii. Lebhaft und sehr markiert (Lively and very marked)
iii. Ruhiges Tempo, mit zartem Ausdruck (Restful tempo, with tender expression)
iv. Lebhaft, sehr markiert (Lively, very marked)

[ii. at 2:53; iii. at 6:00; iv. at 10:12] Harold Wright, clarinet; Boris Kroyt, viola; Murray Perahia, piano. Turnabout (Vox), recorded live at the Library of Congress, Feb. 10, 1967
[ii. at 2:52; iii. at 5:55; iv. at 9:44] Members of the Melos Ensemble of London: Gervase de Peyer, clarinet; Cecil Aronowitz, viola; Lamar Crowson, piano. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, February 1967
[ii. at 2:52; iii. at 6:03; iv. at 10:02] Harold Wright, clarinet; Nobuko Imai, viola; Harris Goldsmith, piano. RCA, recorded in New York City, released 1971
[ii. at 2:38; iii. at 5:44; iv. at 9:43] Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: Gervase de Peyer, clarinet; Walter Trampler, viola; Richard Goode, piano. Classics Record Library (later Musical Heritage Society), recorded c1976, released 1978


CONTINUING OUR LITTLE STORY, WE STRIKE GOLD

"In the entire literature of chamber music, few works so justly hold the affection of concert audiences as the Brahms Clarinet Quintet. For this is one of the most fascinating compositions of a composer legendary for his seriousness, intensity, and concentration of musical thought."

-- from the (unsigned) Concert-Disc LP liner note for the
Kell-Fine Arts Quartet stereo Brahms Clarinet Quintet

Melos Ensemble of London members. EMI-Warner Classics, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, May & July 1964

It doesn't take long to remind me how much I love this autumnal clarinet quintet: the shimmering two bars of synchronized violins (first in thirds, then in sixths -- with, note, a diminuendo in each of the first two bars), joined in bar three by, first, the viola and, then, the cello, sounding pulsing rhythms, and finally -- "finally," in bar five! -- the clarinet entering with that simple two-octave rising arpeggio, F-sharp to F-sharp, at the top of which it is now singing the stretched-to-fuller-length theme.

We've already heard the first two movements of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, in the fine recording by Keith Puddy and the Gabrieli Quartet at the top of the post. Let's listen to the whole thing, first movement by movement (preceded in each case by a brief comment from that Concert-Disc LP liner note), and then the complete work.

BRAHMS: Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115:
i. Allegro

Richly textured, the sound of the first movement is thick, plastic, compressed, hovering mostly in the darker lower registers, except for an occasional flashing sally into the upper reaches. The feeling of resistance, of viscosity, is strengthened by the frequent use of off-beat rhythms: THREE-one-two, THREE-one-two.

Members of the Melos Ensemble: Gervase de Peyer, clarinet; Emanuel Hurwitz and Ivor McMahon, violins; Cecil Aronowitz, viola; Terence Weill, cello. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, May and July 1964

Nash Ensemble: Michael Collins, clarinet; Marcia Crayford and David Ogden, violins; Roger Chase, viola; Christopher van Kampen, cello. CRD, recorded in All Hallows Church, Gospel Oak, London, July 1-2, 1986

Sabine Meyer, clarinet; Alban Berg Quartet (Günter Pichler and Gerhard Schulz, violins; Thomas Kakuska, viola; Valentin Erben, cello). EMI, recorded live in the Mozartsaal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, March 1998

ii. Adagio

From night to day: the contrast between the thick darkness of the first movement and the muted, floating, ethereal strands of sound in the second. Contrast, again, in the middle section of this slow movement: here, the clarinet spins a rhapodic line reminiscent of the "gypsy" music that so intrigued Brahms, the gypsy element suggested further by the rippling accompaniment provided by the string instruments.

Karl Leister, clarinet; Amadeus Quartet (Norbert Brainin and Siegmund Nissel, violins; Peter Schidlof, viola; Martin Lovett, cello). DG, recorded in the Beethovensaal, Hanover (Germany), March 1967

Karl Leister, clarinet; Brandis Quartet (Thomas Brandis and Peter Brem, violins; Wilfried Strehle, viola; Wolfgang Boettcher, cello). Nimbus, recorded in Teldec Studio, Berlin, June 1996

Members of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players: Harold Wright, clarinet; Malcolm Lowe and Laura Park, violins; Burton Fine, viola; Jules Eskin, cello. Philips, recorded in Symphony Hall, May 1993

iii. Andantino -- Presto non assai, ma con sentimento

A studiedly "lazy" and nonchalant third movement, walking its way through momentary passages of agitation . . .

Kálmán Berkes, clarinet; Gábor Tákacs-Nagy and Ryoko Sunagawa, violins; Sándor Hagy, viola; Tibor Bényi, cello. Hungaroton, recorded in Hungaroton Studio, Feb. 21-27, 2003

Stanley Drucker, clarinet; Elysium Quartet (Lisa Kim and Jennifer Tiboris, violins; Dorian Rence, viola; Eileen Moon, cello. Elysium Recordings, recorded in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, Sept.-Oct. 2000

Keith Puddy, clarinet; Gabrieli Quartet (Kenneth Sillito and Brendan O'Reilly (probably, but possibly Claire Simpson), violins, Ian Jewel, viola; Keith Harvey, cello). Classics for Pleasure-EMI, recorded in the U.K., released 1970

iv. Con moto -- Un poco meno mosso

. . . and a rather serious set of variations in the finale round out the work.

The tone of the entire work is serious, for that matter. Were this a Brahms symphony, the serioso element might take on an overwhelming weight from the massiveness of orchestral sound In the Quintet, however, it brings the listener compellingly near to a deeply sensitive musical personality.

Reginald Kell, clarinet; Fine Arts Quartet (Leonard Sorkin and Abramm Loft, violins; Irving Ilmer, viola; George Sopkin, cello). Concert-Disc, released 1958

Reginald Kell, clarinet; Fine Arts Quartet (Leonard Sorkin and Joseph Stepansky, violins; Sheppard Lehnhoff, viola; George Sopkin, cello). Decca (U.S.), recorded in New York City, Oct. 2-5, 1951
[audio file TK]
Reginald Kell, clarinet; Busch Quartet (Adolf Busch and Bruno Straumann, violins; Hugo Gottesmann, viola; Hermann Busch, cello). Live performance from New York City, Dec. 19, 1948 [audio file TK]
Reginald Kell, clarinet; Busch Quartet (Adolf Busch and Gösta Andreasson, violins; Karl Doktor, viola; Hermann Busch, cello). EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio, London, October 1937

BRAHMS: Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115:
i. Allegro
ii. Adagio
iii. Andantino -- Presto non assai, ma con sentimento
iv. Con moto -- Un poco meno mosso

[i. at 0:01; ii. at 14:35; iii. at 26:31; iv. at 31:36] David Shifrin, clarinet; Guarneri Quartet (Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley, violins; Michael Tree, viola; Peter Wiley, cello). Live performance from the Chamber Music Northwest Music Festival, Portland, OR (Kaul Auditorium, Reed College), June 27, 2009


IT'S ABOUT TIME TO PACK IT IN --
with just a few bits of business left hanging

(1) There are still some audio files to be popped in -- from the two Kell-Busch Quartet performances of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.
(2) I still have to explain the uncertain identification of the second violinist in the Puddy-Gabrieli Quartet recording of the Brahms quintet. It's a horrible story. [I try to sort this out, including the extra layer of confusion I added here, in next week's post, "Taking our gold old time with the Gabrieli String Quartet."
(3) I planned all along, once we got through the Brahms Clarinet Quintet to revisit the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, from which it's clearly descended. Most of the files are ready to go, so maybe we can still do that. Perhaps we can combine it with an opportunity I passed up: to present first the Mozart Piano-Winds Quintet and then the Beethoven quintet that stands in its direct line of descent.

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