An English Fantasy: Music for Clarinet and Orchestra
Will TODD (b.1970)
Concerto for Emma (2009-2015) [18:48]
Paul READE (1943-1997)
Suite from The Victorian Kitchen Garden (1987) [10:03]
John DANKWORTH (1927-2010)
Clarinet Concerto The Woolwich (1995) [18:40]
Patrick HAWES (b.1958)
Clarinet Concerto (2015) [21:41]
Emma Johnson (clarinet)
BBC Concert Orchestra/Philip Ellis
rec. Watford Colosseum, 21-23 Oct 2015
NIMBUS ALLIANCE NI6328 [69:19]
The British clarinettist, Emma Johnson, is a lively, delightful
and eminent presence in the classical music scene. She has been a multiple
prize-winner and in 1996 was awarded an MBE for her services to music. Not
only has she made many recordings but also she has been the dedicatee of works
by John Dankworth, Will Todd, Patrick Hawes, Michael Berkeley, Matthew Taylor
and Robin Holloway. She also provides the very personal liner note here although
the four composer profiles are by another hand (not identified). These four
concertos or concerto-type works inhabit various related English styles but
all of them are melodic.
Will
Todd is one of the leading voices in British contemporary music. His range
is wide: from a jazz
mass to accessible
choral, from a grand opera Brunel
to
a violin concerto, from major
choral-orchestral to sacred
music for choirs. Here he adds to the store of English clarinet concertos.
This one goes with a frictionless, swerving swing. It's lyrical, yes,
but also carries inflections from blues and jazz.. The finale is punchy, howling
and sinuous. The movement titles give a hint: I. Blues and Dance;
II. Ballad and III. Funky Tunes.
Lancastrian Paul Reade was something of a presence as a composer
for British television. His work included co-writing with Tim Gibson the theme
for The Antiques Roadshow as well as - this time without a co-writer
- the music for the late-1980s BBC television series The Victorian Kitchen
Garden. That music has gone on to develop a life of its own as a look
at YouTube will show you. The ballet world appealed to him and he wrote two
large-scale efforts: Hobson's
Choice (1989) and Far
from the Madding Crowd (1996).
Reade wrote the signature tune and incidental music for The Victorian
Kitchen Garden, originally for clarinet and harp. A later five-movement
suite for clarinet and orchestra was dedicated to Ms Johnson. The movements
of this suite are: I. Prelude; II. Spring; III. Mists;
IV. Exotica and V. Summer. It's a gentle sorbet of
a piece and moves, with its own modesty, away from the jazz of the Todd concerto.
The tone is slow, casual and warm with a touch of the easy mastery of Herbert
Chappell's Pallisers music. Spring has an Arnoldian
lightness, while Mists is picked out poetically with prominence for
the harp and clarinet. Summer glides along, easygoing and sentimental.
John Dankworth mentored Johnson early in her career and,
as one of her good angels, gave her various opportunities to move onwards
and upwards. Dankworth was best known in the jazz scene but made raids into
and alliances with the classical world. Some may recall his 1960s collaboration
with Matyas Seiber in the shape of the Improvisations for jazz band and
symphony orchestra recorded by the LPO and band with Hugo Rignold
conducting (Saga XIP 7006, 1962). His well thought of Mariposas suite,
paying tribute to various jazz violinists, features on an EM
Records disc.
This Clarinet Concerto is in four movements: I. Andante - Faster;
II. Cantabile - Reggae; III. Slowly - Nostalgically; IV.
Boogie Woogie. The first makes gawky and halting progress. It's
dreamy but this is a dream that senses nightmare at the margins and there
is mildew there, sighs and even decay worthy of Warlock and Bernard van Dieren.
The music then morphs into something bubblingly apt to the instrument. The
second movement is a sophisticated meditation, touchingly filmic and then
merry. I am not at all sure about the reggae aspect but that hardly matters.
The movement Slowly - Nostalgically, evokes for me a picture: a warm
gallic impressionistic haze and a punt moored under thickly overhanging osiers.
Johnson and Dankworth then shake off this mood with Boogie woogie
which at first gambols like a jackanapes. The mood of the penultimate movement
soon reaches out its tendrils with a piercingly poignant blade. Then comes
a swirl of excitement and a simmering dream. Johnson premiered the Concerto
in the Royal Festival Hall with the LPO in 1995. Quite apart from this Concerto
Dankworth wrote various smaller-scale pieces for Johnson which she has recorded.
I associate Patrick Hawes' name with major tonal choral-orchestral
scores and he has indeed written a significant number of such works. The following
have been recorded Lazarus
Requiem, Towards
the Light and Blue
in Blue. There are other examples including Song of Songs (2008),
Hearts of England (2008), Te Deum (2011), The Angel
of Mons (2014) and Eventide: In Memoriam Edith Cavell (2014).
His The Great War Symphony is due its premiere in 2018. Of concertos
or concertante works there is just one other: a Pavane from "The
Incredible Mrs Ritchie" (2002) for guitar and chamber orchestra.
The movements of the Clarinet Concerto bear standard character-tempo titles:
I. Allegretto; II. Sarabande; III. Allegro Marziale.
The first is all pecked out activity and then a sort of sauntering quietness.
A happy smile brings things to a close but none of this is taken at full tilt.
The long central Sarabande recalls the Concertino Pastorale
of John Ireland and the middle movement of the Finzi Clarinet Concerto, the
latter a work championed by Johnson with ASV
and Charles Groves in the 1980s. This Sarabande deploys a gleaming
skein of sound and a suggestion of heat haze. The finale at first steps up,
bustling and busy, like the Dag Wirén Serenade for Strings. As with
the Dankworth, but in a different way, this too soon succumbs to a centripetal
force that tugs towards sighing melancholy.
A predominance of contentment and poetry with the accent on the understated.
Winning ways from Emma Johnson again.
Rob Barnett
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