Clarinet Concerto (Nielsen)
Encyclopedia
Carl Nielsen
's Concerto for Clarinet and orchestra, op. 57 [D.F.129] was written for Danish
clarinet
ist Aage Oxenvad
in 1928. The concerto is presented in one long movement, with four distinct theme groups.
Wind Quintet rehearsing some music by Mozart. He was struck by the tonal beauty and musicianship of this group, and he soon became intimately acquainted with its members. That same year, he wrote his Wind Quintet
expressly for this ensemble. The last movement of this work is a theme and variations depicting in music the personalities of the five players and their respective instruments, much in the manner that Elgar portrayed his friends in the Enigma Variations
.
Nielsen planned to carry the idea further; he wanted to write a concerto for each of his five friends. Only two of these compositions ever came into being. For Gilbert Jespersen, who succeeded Paul Hagemann as flautist of the Copenhagen Quintet, he wrote his Flute Concerto
in 1926; two years later, he composed his Clarinet Concerto for the group's clarinettist, Aage Oxenvad. The latter work, completed August 15, 1928, was first heard in a private concert at the summer home of Carl Johan Michaelsen, in Humlebaek, on September 14, with Oxenvaad as soloist and Emil Telmányi
conducting. The same performers gave the premiere in Copenhagen on October 11 of that same year, when it met with a decidedly mixed reception. Since that time, it has gained much wider acceptance.
The Clarinet Concerto was conceived during the most difficult period in Nielsen's life. He was sixty-three, and had achieved considerable renown throughout Scandinavia; yet he was disappointed that his music had not reached a wider audience, he was deeply concerned with the unsettled state of the world, and he knew that his days were numbered. Perhaps this accounts for the bitter struggle which occurs throughout this concerto—a war between the tonalities of F major and E major. Every time hostilities seem to be at an end, a snare drum
incites the combatants to renewed conflict. Another explanation for this is that the clarinetist for whom he was writing the concerto had a bi-polar disorder. Therefore, the concerto was poking fun at his constant mood swings.
This is how things went according to sources close to Nielsen:
, but a return to the Adagio brings the work to what Robert Simpson
calls an ending of "calm severity," with the key of F major ultimately triumphant.
In his admirably thorough study of Carl Nielsen and his music, Robert Simpson points out what inventive use the composer made of tonality
, and this at a time when other composers threw it over for atonality
.
Despite the storm and stress in the concerto, the composer has kept his forces down almost to chamber music
proportions. In addition to the solo clarinet, the only other instruments called for in the score are two bassoons, two horns, snare drum and strings. Because of the prominence of the snare drum line in the piece, a snare drum is still called for in the piano reduction.
Very interesting further reading is provided by posts by Eric Nelson on 9 and 11 February 1997 on the Klarinet reflector .
Carl Nielsen
Carl August Nielsen , , widely recognised as Denmark's greatest composer, was also a conductor and a violinist. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age...
's Concerto for Clarinet and orchestra, op. 57 [D.F.129] was written for Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
ist Aage Oxenvad
Aage Oxenvad
Aage Oxenvad was a Danish clarinetist who played in the Royal Danish Orchestra from 1909. Carl Nielsen wrote his Clarinet Concerto for Oxenvad who played at its premiere in 1928.-Early life:...
in 1928. The concerto is presented in one long movement, with four distinct theme groups.
History
In 1921, Nielsen heard the CopenhagenCopenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
Wind Quintet rehearsing some music by Mozart. He was struck by the tonal beauty and musicianship of this group, and he soon became intimately acquainted with its members. That same year, he wrote his Wind Quintet
Wind quintet
A wind quintet, also sometimes known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players . The term also applies to a composition for such a group....
expressly for this ensemble. The last movement of this work is a theme and variations depicting in music the personalities of the five players and their respective instruments, much in the manner that Elgar portrayed his friends in the Enigma Variations
Enigma Variations
Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra , Op. 36, commonly referred to as the Enigma Variations, is a set of a theme and its fourteen variations written for orchestra by Edward Elgar in 1898–1899. It is Elgar's best-known large-scale composition, for both the music itself and the...
.
Nielsen planned to carry the idea further; he wanted to write a concerto for each of his five friends. Only two of these compositions ever came into being. For Gilbert Jespersen, who succeeded Paul Hagemann as flautist of the Copenhagen Quintet, he wrote his Flute Concerto
Flute Concerto (Nielsen)
Carl Nielsen's Concerto for Flute and orchestra [D.F.119] was written in 1926 for Gilbert Jespersen, who succeeded Paul Hagemann as flautist of the Copenhagen Wind quintet. The concerto, in two movements, was generally well received at its premiere in Paris in October 1926 where Nielsen had...
in 1926; two years later, he composed his Clarinet Concerto for the group's clarinettist, Aage Oxenvad. The latter work, completed August 15, 1928, was first heard in a private concert at the summer home of Carl Johan Michaelsen, in Humlebaek, on September 14, with Oxenvaad as soloist and Emil Telmányi
Emil Telmányi
Emil Telmányi, b. 22 June 1892 in Arad, then in the Kingdom of Hungary, d. 13 June 1988 in Holte, Denmark was a Hungarian violinist who invented the Bach bow, designed to play and sustain three or four notes on a violin for Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin...
conducting. The same performers gave the premiere in Copenhagen on October 11 of that same year, when it met with a decidedly mixed reception. Since that time, it has gained much wider acceptance.
The Clarinet Concerto was conceived during the most difficult period in Nielsen's life. He was sixty-three, and had achieved considerable renown throughout Scandinavia; yet he was disappointed that his music had not reached a wider audience, he was deeply concerned with the unsettled state of the world, and he knew that his days were numbered. Perhaps this accounts for the bitter struggle which occurs throughout this concerto—a war between the tonalities of F major and E major. Every time hostilities seem to be at an end, a snare drum
Snare drum
The snare drum or side drum is a melodic percussion instrument with strands of snares made of curled metal wire, metal cable, plastic cable, or gut cords stretched across the drumhead, typically the bottom. Pipe and tabor and some military snare drums often have a second set of snares on the bottom...
incites the combatants to renewed conflict. Another explanation for this is that the clarinetist for whom he was writing the concerto had a bi-polar disorder. Therefore, the concerto was poking fun at his constant mood swings.
This is how things went according to sources close to Nielsen:
Carl Nielsen’s friend Carl Johan Michaelsen had to urge him several times before he started composing a second concerto for a member of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet. This time it revolved around clarinettist Aage Oxenvad. Nielsen started composing in the spring of 1928. On 15 August he completed the score at Damgaard. Emil Telmányi had already started on an arrangement for piano for the benefit of Oxenvad, who grumbled that Nielsen must be able to play the clarinet since he had systematically used the notes that are most difficult to play.
The Concerto was performed for the first time on 14 September at a private concert in Carl Johan Michaelsen’s summer villa Højtofte, in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen. The soloist was Oxenvad, to whom the Concerto is dedicated. Twenty-two members of the Chapel Royal were conducted by Emil Telmányi. The first public performance took place in Copenhagen on 11 October with the same players, and received a generally positive reception. Politiken wrote:
“... he has liberated the soul of the clarinet, not only the wild animal aspect but also its special brand of ruthless poetry.... This work could hardly have found a more homogeneous interpretation. Oxenvad’s sonority is in tune with the trolls and the giants, and he has soul, a rough and stocky primordial force mixed with naive Danish mildness. Certainly Carl Nielsen must have had his particular clarinet sound in mind while composing this Concerto.”
Structure
Eschewing the large classical concerto form, Nielsen has cast the Clarinet Concerto in one continuous movement. It begins with a firm Allegretto un poco, relieved by a somewhat more songful second theme. There is much stormy strife between the soloist and the orchestra and between the two principal competing keys. This is followed by a Poco adagio, interrupted several times by quicker, more disturbed sections. The final part is an energetic Allegro vivaceVivace
Vivace is Italian for "lively" and "vivid". It is pronounced in the International Phonetic Alphabet.Vivace is used as an Italian musical term indicating a movement that is in a lively mood ....
, but a return to the Adagio brings the work to what Robert Simpson
Robert Simpson (composer)
Robert Simpson was an English composer and long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster.He is best known for his orchestral and chamber music , and for his writings on the music of Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius. He studied composition under Herbert Howells...
calls an ending of "calm severity," with the key of F major ultimately triumphant.
In his admirably thorough study of Carl Nielsen and his music, Robert Simpson points out what inventive use the composer made of tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
, and this at a time when other composers threw it over for atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
.
Despite the storm and stress in the concerto, the composer has kept his forces down almost to chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
proportions. In addition to the solo clarinet, the only other instruments called for in the score are two bassoons, two horns, snare drum and strings. Because of the prominence of the snare drum line in the piece, a snare drum is still called for in the piano reduction.
Sources
- Liner notes by Paul Affelder from the Louis Cahuzac recording, John Frandsen conducting the Copenhagen Royal Opera Orchestra, Columbia Records.
- Bingham, Ann Marie: Carl Nielsen's koncert for Klarinet og Orkester, opus 57 (1928): A performance guide, D.M.A. diss., University of Kentucky 1990, 220 p.
- Master Class with Burt HaraBurt HaraBurt Hara has been principal clarinetist with the Minnesota Orchestra since 1987.Hara is a native of California. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1984 from the Curtis Institute of Music, where his principal teachers were Donald Montanaro, Yehuda Gilad, and Mitchell Lurie.Before coming to...
at University of IowaUniversity of IowaThe University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
, Fall 2006.
Very interesting further reading is provided by posts by Eric Nelson on 9 and 11 February 1997 on the Klarinet reflector .
Recordings on 78RPM
- Louis CahuzacLouis CahuzacLouis Cahuzac was a French clarinetist and composer. Cahuzac was an outstanding performer and one of the few clarinetists who made a career as a soloist in the first part of the 20th century....
. Nielsen, Columbia LDX 7000-02 © 1947, (p) 1947 - Aage OxenvadAage OxenvadAage Oxenvad was a Danish clarinetist who played in the Royal Danish Orchestra from 1909. Carl Nielsen wrote his Clarinet Concerto for Oxenvad who played at its premiere in 1928.-Early life:...
. Nielsen, His Masters Voice HMV DB 5704
Recordings on LP
- Louis Cahuzac. Nielsen, Columbia ML-2219 © 1947, (p) 1947
- Josef Deak. Carl Nielsen, Turnabout Vox TV34261 © 1969, (p) 1969
- Stanley DruckerStanley DruckerStanley Drucker is an American clarinetist. Of Ukrainian ancestry, he began clarinet studies at age ten with Leon Russianoff, and remained his student for five years. He attended the High School of Music & Art...
. CBS 72639, Columbia MS-7028, (p) 1967 - Ib Eriksson. clarinet Concerto, Decca LXT-2979, Decca ACL-292, London LL-1142 © 1954, (p) 1954
- Benny GoodmanBenny GoodmanBenjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
. Nielsen..., RCA SB-6701, RCA LSC-2920 (p) 1966 - John McCaw. Nielsen, Unicorn UNS-239 © 1971, (p) 1971
- Albert Sandström. Clarinet Concerto, Primo 011 © 1979, (p) 1979
- Kjell-Inge Stevensson. Nielsen, EMI SLS-5027 (c) 1975, (p) 1975
- Kalev Velthut. Clarinet Concerto, Melodija C10 28491 002 © 1989
Recordings available on CD
- Kevin Banks. Concerto, Naxos 8.554189 © 1998, (p) 1997
- François Benda. Feuerwerke, FONO FSM FCD 97 212 © 1995, (p) 1995 (1993 recording)
- François Benda. GENUIN GEN88128 © 2008, (p) 2008 (reissue of 1993 recording)
- Walter BoeykensWalter BoeykensKnight Walter Boeykens January 6, 1938 Bornem, Belgium is a Belgian conductor and a world renowned clarinetist. Boeykens has an impressive discography including several critically acclaimed performances that are testimony to his status as one of the most notable clarinetists of the 20th century...
. Nielsen, Harmonia Mundi 901489 © 1994, (p) 1994 - Louis Cahuzac. Nielsen, the Historic Recordings, Clarinet Classics cc0002 © 1992, (p) 1947
- Philippe CuperPhilippe CuperPhilippe Cuper is a French clarinetist, born in Lille on April 25, 1957.He is considered to be one of the best representatives of the current French clarinet school.- Studies :...
. Copland/Francaix/Nielsen, ADDA 581315 © 1993, (p) 1992 - Stanley DruckerStanley DruckerStanley Drucker is an American clarinetist. Of Ukrainian ancestry, he began clarinet studies at age ten with Leon Russianoff, and remained his student for five years. He attended the High School of Music & Art...
. The Royal Edition no 61 of 100, Sony Classical SMK 47599 © 1993 (p) 1967 - Ib Eriksson. clarinet Concerto, Dutton Laboratories CDLXT 2505 (c) 1954, (p) 1954
- Martin FröstMartin FröstMartin Fröst is a Swedish clarinetist, born in Sundsvall in the north of Sweden in 1970. He first started playing the violin at the age of six, but he found playing soccer and basketball were more interesting. When he was nine, he started playing the clarinet, and when he was 15, he moved to...
. Nielsen & Aho clarinet concertos, BIS SACD-1463 (c) 2007, (p) 2007 - Benny GoodmanBenny GoodmanBenjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
. Nielsen..., RCA Classics (Classical Navigator 88) 74321 29255 2 (c) 1995, (p) 1966 - Janet Hilton. Concertos, Chandos CHAN 8618, (c) 1988 (p) 1988
- Kojo Kullervo. Nielsen/Eglund/Crusell, Finlandia 4509-95873-2 (c) 1993, (p) 1993
- John Kruse. Nielsen, Kontrapunkt 32254 (c) 1997, (p) 1997
- John McCaw. Nielsen, The concertos, Regis RRC1208, s.d. (re-issue of Unicorn 1971)
- Spyros Mourikis. Nielsen, P2musik DR ISCR DK-QHA—98-001 (c) 1997 (p) 1997
- Arne Møller. Nielsen, Classico CLASSCD 514 (in album CLASSCD 514-15) (c) 1965, (p) 1965
- Robert Plane. Clarinet Concerto, BBC MM205 (c) 1999, (p) 1999
- Håkan RosengrenHåkan RosengrenHåkan Rosengren is a Swedish clarinet virtuoso, active in the United States and Europe. He has worked with Esa-Pekka Salonen, Neeme Järvi, Christopher Hogwood, Osmo Vänskä, Jorma Panula, Pascal Verrot, Jan Krenz, Matthias Aeschbacher, Okko Kamu, Keith Clark, Sakari Oramo, and Leif Sagerstam in...
. Clarinet Concerto, Sony SK 53 276 (c) 1991, (p) 1991 - Olle Schill. Concerto, BIS CD-616 (in album CD-614-16) (c) 1985 (p) 1985
- Kjell-Inge Stevensson. Nielsen, EMI Classics 0946 3 81503 2 9 (c) 1975, (p) 1975
- Richard Stolzman. Lutoslawski/Nielsen/Prokofiev, RCA Victor Red Seal 09026-63836-2 (c) 2001, (p) 2001
- Niels Thomsen. Nielsen, Chandos CHAN 8894, (c) 1990, (p) 1990
- John Bruce YehJohn Bruce YehJohn Bruce Yeh is the acting principal clarinetist and Eb clarinetist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Yeh joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1977. He started as solo bass clarinetist and two years later was appointed assistant principal and Eb clarinetist.-External links:*...
. clarinet Concerto Centaur CRC 2024, (c) 1985, (p) 1985
Recordings on SACD
- Martin FröstMartin FröstMartin Fröst is a Swedish clarinetist, born in Sundsvall in the north of Sweden in 1970. He first started playing the violin at the age of six, but he found playing soccer and basketball were more interesting. When he was nine, he started playing the clarinet, and when he was 15, he moved to...
. Nielsen & Aho clarinet concertos, BIS SACD-1463 (c) 2007, (p) 2007
First recording
- Louis CahuzacLouis CahuzacLouis Cahuzac was a French clarinetist and composer. Cahuzac was an outstanding performer and one of the few clarinetists who made a career as a soloist in the first part of the 20th century....
, Nielsen, the Historic Recordings, Clarinet Classics cc0002 (c) 1992, (p) 1947