Maybe we can ease into the Copland Clarinet Concerto by focusing on the man without whom it wouldn't exist

Benny Goodman (1909-1986) in 1946, about the time he added Copland to the list of composers he commissioned to create new works for the clarinet.

by Ken

This week we're supposed to be -- no, we're going to be -- thinking about and listening to the Copland Clarinet Concerto, a fairly popular but seemingly unassumng little gem that I'm going to warn you to handle with care, as it could just burrow its way into your soul. The post is mostly written, I think, but stubbornly refuses to allow for the resolution of several issues without which publication isn't possible.

So I got the idea that maybe we might just listen to the piece, and then I got the additional idea that we could pull out of the simmering post several performances featuring as soloist the man without whom there wouldn't have been a Copland Clarinet Concerto, the great clarinetist Benny Goodman.

Like all clarinetists, it was a subject of great regret for Benny G. that the repertory of composed music for his instrument wasn't exactly vast. Unlike nearly all of those clarinetists, however, he did something about it. Wearing all his musical hats, he devoted himself to expanding that repertory, and in the realm of "serious" music he put his money where his mouth was, commissioning a number of composers to make nice with the clarinet.


COPLAND: Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra with Harp and Piano:
i. Slowly and expressively
Cadenza
ii. Rather fast


[cadenza at 6:30; lead-in to ii. at 9:05] Benny Goodman, clarinet; NBC Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. Broadcast premiere performance, Nov. 6, 1950

[cadenza at 6:36; lead-in to ii. at 8:57] Benny Goodman, clarinet; Laura Newell, harp; Abba Bogin, piano; Columbia Symphony Strings, Aaron Copland, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in New York City, Feb. 20, 1963

And by way of a tease, here's just the opening of one more:

This performance is from a 1976 Copland Conducts Copland concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic -- a Unitel recording, if I've got this right, which has been issued by Naxos on both DVD and Blu-ray.


Benny Goodman, clarinet; Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. Live performance from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, filmed 1976