AVAILABILITY
www.symposiumrecords.co.uk
After the primacy of
Charles Draper the leading British clarinettists
of their generation were Frederick Thurston
and Reginald Kell, both known admiringly
by the names Jack and Reg. Kell moved
to America after the Second War where
he became as influential a figure on
his instrument as had cellist Felix
Salmond before him. Thurston however
died at fifty-two, a victim of lung
cancer. His interest in recordings was
minimal and unlike Kell he didn’t make
many solo discs, which makes this release
from Symposium of outstanding interest.
A member of the BBC
Symphony from its inception Thurston’s
desire for a solo career was thwarted
by the outbreak of War, though he still
managed to commission new works from
composers he admired. He succeeded Kell
as principal clarinet of the Philharmonia
and but maintained his position as the
leading clarinettist in the country
for only a short time; a lung was removed
in 1952 and he died the following year.
He had formed strong musical bonds with
other elite players; Marie Wilson, one-time
leader of the BBC Symphony under Boult,
Dennis Brain, Sidney Sutcliffe, Gareth
Morris, Cecil James and Harold Jackson
amongst them.
Though Thurston is
remembered today as an orchestral and
chamber player – he won the Cobbett
Gold Medal for his chamber music services
– his elevated performances saw him
appear as a prestigious soloist. We
have examples here of Thurston the chamber,
sonata and solo clarinettist and they
give a rounded view of his interests
and musical affiliations, as indeed
they do of his superb musicianship.
He, Brain, Wilson, Whitehead and Czech
pianist Lisa Fuchsova join in a performance
of one of Fibich’s best known and most
imaginative chamber works, the Quintet
for clarinet, horn, violin, cello and
piano in D. This was recorded on acetates
and has a constant skein of scuffing
throughout its length. Apart from this
damage the sound is formidably forward
and ears attuned to the problems inherent
in this type of recording will adjust
fairly soon, though not always comfortably.
The mini cadential passages in the Largo
are particularly characterful, the Scherzo
is bold and the two trio sections full
of dancing verve, Fuchsova proving particularly
adept. The Stanford Concerto with the
appropriately named Stanford Robinson
conducting is the most recent of these
survivors, dating from the year before
Thurston’s early death. His Royal College
of Music teacher, Charles Draper, had
premiered the work and it was the piece
with which Thurston first came to prominence
at the college with a performance that
inspired a letter of gratitude from
the composer (from whom Thea King suggests
in her notes he may have had some coaching).
Thurston played the Concerto frequently
during his career and his idiomatic
understanding and liquid tone are revelatory,
no less than the beautiful cantilena
of the andante con moto section. I’d
never really noticed before the rather
Elgarian string figuration of the final
allegro moderato, a section that finds
the soloist sweepingly elegant and alive.
There’s some overloading at points but
the sound here is quite good.
The Ireland Fantasy-Sonata
was dedicated to Thurston and this broadcast
probably dates from 1948, the second
occasion on which Thurston and Ireland
broadcast it. There are two gaps in
the performance, small ones presumably
for a change of acetates, and Symposium
has not patched, preferring to leave
silence, and since Thurston made no
commercial recording of the work there’s
nothing to patch from. There is again
some real scuffing but one can admire
another welcome opportunity to listen
to Ireland’s measured but volatile pianism
(apart from the solo works we have the
First Violin Sonata with Grinke, the
Second with Sammons and the Cello Sonata
with Sala). The balance is reasonably
good for a broadcast performance and
Thurston is charismatic and full of
timbral variety and rhythmic wit
Thea King, Thurston’s
widow, writes the acute and perceptive
notes. As I said Thurston made relatively
few recordings; the Bliss Clarinet Quintet
with the Grillers, Mozart’s Trio K498
with Rebecca Clarke and Kathleen Long,
Stanford’s Caoine and Alan Frank’s Suite
for two clarinets (with Ralph Clarke)
are amongst them. But so far as I know
no Finzi, Rawsthorne or Arnold [No 1]
Concertos, Howells Sonata or Rawsthorne
Quartet – he was the dedicatee of all
of them. So all thanks to Symposium
for this timely release; gone these
fifty years but impossible to forget.
Jonathan Woolf
Frederick Thurston (clarinet) with 