British Clarinet Quintets
Edwin ROXBURGH (b. 1937)
Quintet for Clarinet and Strings (2007) [10:34]
Kit TURNBULL (b. 1969)
Three Cautionary Tales (Carbrooke Dancers; The Mermaid’s Pool; Lantern Man)
(2007) [13:05]
Nigel CLARKE (b. 1960)
Equiano (2007) [18:10]
Martin ELLERBY (b. 1957)
Epitaph VII: Memento (Terezin) (The Closed Town; Arbeit; The Silent Hunger;
Fear; The Butterfly; Tears; The Deportation Train; Forgotten; To Olga …) (2008)
[22:06]
Linda Merrick (clarinet)
Navarra Quartet (Xander van Vliet, violin I; Marije Ploemacher, violin II;
Simone van der Giessen, viola; Nathaniel Boyd, cello)
rec. 12-13 July 2008, Lord Rhodes Room, RNCM, Manchester
Currently only available as download.
NAXOS 9.70122 [64:27]
Good to have this provocative, well recorded and documented collection of
modern British clarinet quintets. No ‘usual suspects’ here. Instead we are
proffered works that bid fair to engage the established repertoire in years
to come.
Edwin Roxburgh is onstage first and kicks the door in with his single
movement Quintet for Clarinet and Strings. The music is urgent, violent and
vehement with no hang-ups about dissonance or about moving into an eldritch
shadow-world. He is not long-winded and for all his modernistic tendencies
this work is driven by a romantic sensibility even if it is prone to impish
devilment. Roxburgh in his liner-notes points out that he has also written
“a concerto for Gervase de Peyer (recorded by Linda Merrick on NMC D119),
Wordsworth Miniatures for solo clarinet (commissioned and recorded by Linda
Merrick), Dithyramb 1 for clarinet and percussion…and a quartet for clarinets,
Heliochrome.”
Kit Turnbull’s Three Cautionary Tales are drawn from a sweeter spring.
The Carbrooke Dancers is said to be “inspired by the medieval legend of young
girls turned to stone after dancing to the music of a strange fiddler in a
churchyard.” The music is both tonal and merry. The Mermaid’s Pool evokes
“the legend of drowned young women who lured passers-by into sharing their
fate through their hypnotic songs.” This is more contemplative and takes the
shape of a grave slow dance – rather Dowland-like though filtered through
twentieth century pastoral mists. The finale, Lantern Man, is suggestive of
the lights that flicker and beckon the unwise into marshland at night. These
are very attractive haunting miniatures – a sort of modern English echo of
Erben’s Czech tales. Turnbull is an Ellerby pupil.
Nigel Clarke’s Equiano “is inspired by the life story of Nigerian-born
Olaudah Equiano (1745–97), who at the age of eleven was kidnapped and sold
to slave traders. Transported to Virginia, he was subsequently bought by a
British naval officer and taken to London ….. He bought his freedom in 1833,
and became an important member of the abolitionist movement ...” This single
movement piece - which adds to the usual forces antique cymbals and chain
as a reminder of slavery – is more accommodating of caustic dissonance than
the Turnbull. This is done with intricacy and sensitivity, the strings moan
and slide in Penderecki slaloming. As things progress across the single movement
it develops a frenetic angular energy.
Martin Ellerby’s Epitaph VII: Memento (Terezin) is part of a series
“reflecting atrocities associated with events related to World War II [with]
… as its subject the Nazi concentration camp located at Terezin in the former
Czechoslovakia.” The nine brief movements track through klezmer (Deportation
Train and Closed Town), melancholy reflection familiar from Gorecki and Suk
(Tears and The Silent Hunger), creepy despair (Forgotten) and touching moments
of escape from reality (Butterfly and Olga). The Olga movement is plangent
with a keenly nostalgic blade. Ellerby was a pupil of Joseph Horovitz at the
Royal College of Music and later of Wilfred Josephs. There are eleven concertos
and four symphonies which I now rather hope to hear. These days anything is
possible.
Linda Merrick strikes me as a most sensitive player who seems also to take
great care over minimising the sounds of the mechanical key actions of her
instrument. The Navarra are a young ensemble who, on this evidence, are strong
prospects for the future.
A varied anthology accommodating a variety of styles: tougher for Clarke and
Roxburgh and with more melodic gravamen and accessible humanity in the case
of Ellerby and Turnbull.
Rob Barnett
An anthology accommodating a variety of styles: tougher and melodic.