Richard Stoltzman's recording of Corigliano and Copland clarinet concerti and Bernstein
Aug 26 '08
The Bottom Line Listen to Stoltzman whenever you have the chance to do so!
I didn't plan to write a series of reviews of recordings of music composed by John Coriagliano. Noticing that he passed his 70th birthday earlier this year stimulated some reconsideration of the puzzling mix of neo-Romanticism, serialism, lyricism, and abrasiveness that characterize his music.
The first piece by Corigliano that I encountered on a 1988 recording of three 20th-century American pieces for clarinet and orchestra. At the time the great Benny Goodman album "Meeting at the Summit" with him playing compositions for clarinet and orchestra by Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Morton Gould, and Igor Stravinisky, each conducted by the composer, was not in print.
The concert in which I was dazzled by clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, who then lived in the East (San Francisco) Bay, was one in which he played Rossini's "Theme and Variations for Clarinet and Orchestra" and part of a Mozart aria (from "The Clemency of Titus") for soprano and clarinet. I thought he was sensational, easily the most sensationally virtuosical clarinets I've ever heard, and acquired Stoltzman's recordings of the canon for clarinet (and chamber quartet or orchestra) and a number of his crossover discs. I think that he is a superb clarinetist with a very lyrical sound from way low to way high in the clarinet register.
When I got the recording of Stoltzman and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Leighton Smith, I like the upbeat Bernstein and loved the hauntingly beautiful one-movement Copland clarinet concert. The Corigiliano I found mostly abrasive, especially placed before the Copland.
John Corigliano's Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra
I still find some of it annoying -- some cacophonous parts, but also some of what sounds to me like doodling for the clarinet. Oddly, Corigliano himself think the first two movements are "terribly serious. There is a trilling from 1:25-1:50 in that seems positively Disneyesque, and more magic carpet fluttering around the 4-minute mark (with trombones sounding like hippopotami trying to fly. Can either be part of what Corigliano claims is a cadenza, one he titled "Ignis fatuus" (Will-o'-wisp). He wrote that "like that phosphorescent flickering light, this cadenza is almost audibly invisible." I'd say that it is "inaudibly a cadenza. Around the six-minute mark is something I consider a cadenza -- interrupted by xylophone, accompanied some of the way by drums. "Goading the orchestra" (more of Coriagliano's description) seems apt.
The slow, second movement, titled "Elegy" was written in memory of the composer's father, John Corigliano, Sr., long-time concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The piece was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, premiered in 1977 with principal clarinetist Stanley Drucker. Because Drucker and the senior Corigliano had been principals together, it seemed natural to the composer to write an extended -- albeit desolate -- dialogue between violin and clarinet.
The third movement Antiphonal Toccata is more or less bifurcated. The first section involves alternating calls on the stage as well as motion (of the melodic line) across the state. The second involves five horns, two trumpets, two clarinets situated out in various parts of the concert hall. The first melody (Corigliano calls it "melodic material" quotes Giovanni Gabrieli's 1597 Sonata piano e forte. The tocatta is introduced by the clarinet. The concerto concludes with a very loud coda recapitulating the Gabrielli theme with an antiphonal ending.
There are parts of the Corigliano clarinet concerto that I still find abrasive (especially about two minutes into the finale, shrill doodling followed by insistent drumming, but then there is some beautiful, lyrical music more elegaic to my ears than the "elegy" movement provides before more even shriller cries two minutes before the end and a ponderous downward scale to bombastic epic movie music, a run upward, and a long trill up there as the orchestra climaxes).
The Copland Concerto for Clarinet, Strings, Harp and Piano was written in 1947-48 during a goodwill tour of South America to a commission for Benny Goodman. The decision to use jazz idioms was Cropland's, not mandated by Goodman. Copland said it was inspired by Goodman's playing though it had "nothing to do with the 'hot jazz' improvisation for which Benny Goodman and his sextet were noted."
Corigliano inverted Cropland's structure. Cropland's allegedly one-movement concerto has audible breaks with a virtuosic cadenza between lyrical movements -- "bittersweet" according to Copland. The final part is jaunty fusing some elements of the popular South American (particularly Brazilian) music Copland was hearing. Stoltzman cajoles attention quite masterfully before a swaggering dance that begins about 5 minutes before the end. The clarinet recapitulation is notably more syncopated. He also makes the exuberant final part(s) displays of exceptional virtuosity.
Leonard Bernstein intended Prelude, Fugue and Riffs for clarinetist Woody Herman and his ensemble, "The Thundering Herd" in 1949, but it was not premiered until 1955, and then by Benny Goodman. The Prelude in particular "swings" though the Fugue is at least as syncopated with "hot" big band sound. The "Riffs" are frozen improvisations -- fully written, not left to the soloist. It's not jazz, just using jazz idioms but not the improvised ornamentation. Another way of putting it is that the rhythms are from jazz, the structure is classical (and, in the instance of the strict fugue, preclassical!).
I guess there are some who would find the "Riffs" "noisy." They get a bit frenzied but are never abrasive (at least to my ears).
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A 1993 recording of Richard Stoltzman playing the Copland concerto (also with the London Symphony, this time conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas) along with some shorter pieces by Bernstein and George Gershwin (not Bernstein's "Prelude, Fugue & Riffs") is currently available. Most of this recording is with pianist Eric Stern rather than an orchestra.
Used copies of the Corigliano-Copland-Bernstein disc are available. I don't play that one very often since the Goodman "Meeting at the Summit" album (with some Bartok "Contrasts" added) has been available on CD.
I commend Stoltzman for championing new music, even when I don't especially like the music. He has also made premier recordings of clarinet concerti by Lukas Foss and William Thomas McKinney (along with a concerto by Einar Englund) and been involved in new music commissioned by the ensemble Tashi. And I treasure Stoltzman's recording of the Rossini that introduced his playing to my ears, along with the ravishingly beautiful first Carl Maria von Weber clarinet concerto and Mozart's Andante in C (K. 315) transcribed for clarinet. Alexander Schneider conducted the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in that delight-filled recording (from 1983!) Stoltzman(who was born in 1942 in Omaha) is a member of the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music. He commissioned Clare Fischer to write a symphonic work using musical themese by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn and toured widely with the resulting "The Duke, Swee'pea and Me.
© 2008, Stephen O. Murray
Tracks and TImings of the Disc Most Discussed Above
Corigliano Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra
Cadenzas 9:24
Elegy 11:23
Antiphonal Toccata 9:45
Copland Concerto for Clarinet, Strings, Harp and Piano 18:02
Bernstein Prelude, Fugue and Riffs 7:31
Total: 56:04
I think that his First Symphony is the most impressivr Corigliano composition. I wrote about that athttp://www.epinions.com/content_294236884612,
and about his violin and piano concerti in my previous three epinions postings.
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