Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor Rob Barnett Editor in Chief
John Quinn Contributing Editor Ralph Moore Webmaster
David Barker Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf MusicWeb Founder Len Mullenger
Buy
through MusicWeb
from £14.30/15.10/15.60 postage
paid. You
may prefer to pay by Sterling cheque or
Euro notes to avoid PayPal. Contact
for details
Clarient
Concertos
Karol
KURPÍNSKI (1785-1857) (arr. Jerzy Młodziejowski and Marcin Zieliński)
Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra: Allegro (1823) [13:59] Carl Maria von WEBER (1786-1826)
Fantasia and Rondo, from Quintet for Clarinet, Two Violins, Viola and Cello in
B flat, Op. 34 (1815) [12:07] Marcin ZIELIŃSKI (b.1975)
Concertino for Clarinet solo and strings [10:18] Tobias SCHWENKE (b.1974)
Concerto for Clarinet solo and fifteen strings (2000) [12:43]
Artur Pachlewski (clarinet)
Consonare per Varsavia and friends/Jan Stanienda (violin/conductor)
rec. Church of Blessed Virgin Mary, New Town, Warsaw, May and September 2002 DUX
0396 [49:09]
Artur Pachlewski is a highly accomplished young clarinettist
who studied with, amongst others, Eduard Brunner; he has been
pretty well garlanded with prizes and those he has worked with
include the Kronos Quartet, Michael Chance, the BBC Singers;
performances have been broadcast by the BBC and Polish Radio
and Television. On this CD, issued in 2003, his qualities – which
include precision of intonation, fluidity of sound and tonal
range – are readily audible. Whether the choice of repertoire
was entirely judicious is another question.
The programme begins with a single movement from a concerto
by Karol Kurpiński. Kurpiński’s main reputation
was as a composer of operas. His first opera – Pygmalion,
now lost – was composed in his early twenties and he went
on to write a further twenty three works for the stage, also
becoming principal conductor of the Warsaw Opera. He was
well schooled in the traditions of Viennese Classicism, but
also responsive to newer developments. His clarinet concerto
was completed when he was in Paris, travelling under the
auspices of the Polish government in order to learn more
of the state of music in other countries. He had the opportunity
to work with Weber on this tour and Weber’s influence is
detectable in this concerto. What we actually hear is the
first movement of the concerto in an arrangement for string
ensemble made, we are told, by Jerzy Młodziejowski and
Marcin Zieliński – which puzzles me a little. The only
Jerzy Młodziejowski that I know of was the composer
and conductor who, born in 1909, died in 1975 – the very
year in which Zieliński was born, making it a little
hard to understand how they could have collaborated on an
arrangement. Am I missing something here? The piece itself
is pleasant, melodic and nicely shaped – essentially a classical
sonata. But it isn’t especially remarkable and it is hard
to see why the movement was thought so special that it should
be separated from the larger work of which it is part and
presented in this way. It would have been much more satisfying,
I suspect, to have heard the full concerto.
The two movements from Weber’s Op. 34 quintet are a fitting
complement to the piece by Kurpiński, written just a
few years earlier.. Weber’s quintet is, of course, a very
demanding piece technically, and Pachlewski certainly passes
any such tests altogether successfully. I am not sure, though,
that Pachlewski’s clarinet doesn’t dominate a little too
much in what is more of an ensemble piece than it appears
to be in this performance. Still, Pachlewski spins out the
melodies very attractively in the slow fantasia and there’s
a fair bit of dancing vitality in the rondo. Again, though,
it is a shame that we have only part(s) of the work. It would
surely have been better to have given us either the Kurpiński
of the Weber complete?
With the last two works on the CD we do get complete works;
we also move from the classical (in a broad sense) to the
contemporary. Marcin Zieliński, born in Warsaw, studied
both organ and composition at the Music Academy there and
performs regularly as an organist. No date of composition
is given for his Concertino, of which this is a world premiėre
recording. A single movement piece, essentially neo-classical
in manner, it makes pleasant if unremarkable listening, the
most interesting passages involving a repeated clarinet melody
against shifting ostinatos in the strings.
Tobias Schwenke – whose concerto also receives a world premiėre
recording here – was born in Berlin and studied with, amongst
others, Walter Zimmermann. Pianist as well as composer, Schwencke’s
work is well-known on the European ‘new music’ circuit and
this is an adventurous piece, exploiting unconventional instrumental
techniques, not least in the way the strings are employed.
A brief booklet note by Tomasz Jeż tells us that “the
composer provides for several methods of performance”. It
is unclear whether that simply means that the instruments
are played in several different and unorthodox fashions or
whether there are significant variables in the score, allowing
for substantial differences between individual performances
of the piece. The performance we do get to hear is intriguing,
with oddly tuned strings, overblown clarinet, passages of
relative stillness and silence, abrupt minor explosions of
sound; throughout there is a real sense of dialogue, of performers
listening to one another, of parts adding up to a whole.
The works by Zieliński and Schwenke are the most satisfying
things here, The strings of Consonare per Varsavia make an
excellent contribution throughout, under the direction of
Jan Stanienda, in support of the obviously considerable skills
of Artur Pachlewski.
Reviews
from previous months Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the
discs reviewed. details We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin
Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to
which you refer.