More clarinet concertos

In the Summer of 2000 I had the great pleasure of meeting James Gillespie, editor of The Clarinet Journal, during the International Clarinet Association (ICA) convention in Oklahoma. James asked me if I would like to contribute a regular column – an invitation that I found both humbling and daunting! The following ‘Letter from the UK’ was first published in September 2004 in The Clarinet Journal, the official publication of the ICA.

Following hot on the heels of Ian Scott’s recording of British Clarinet Concertos comes a further, and dazzling, compilation of (mostly re-issued) concertos. A five-disc set, it includes those of Stanford, Finzi and both the Arnold concertos (played by Emma Johnson) as well as the Horowitz Concertante (played by Ian Scott). Various concertos for flute, oboe and bassoon complete this fascinating compilation. Altogether there are eighteen works included; the set is called My England and is on the Resonance label – CDRSB 505. Anyone wishing to acquaint themselves with some delightful music from Lambert to Fogg, Vaughan Williams to Blake and Rawsthorne to Gunning will find this quite a treasure trove. 

I am reminded of a story told to me by my clarinet teacher, John Davies, of a clarinet concerto that was so nearly written – and would surely have become a very important work – but in the event, was to remain just an enthusiastic young player’s dream. In the early 1960s, John paid Michael Tippett a visit at his home in deepest Wiltshire. He had been granted an audience with the great man and his mission was to persuade the composer to write him a concerto. Iain Hamilton had done so some years earlier, and Alexander Goehr and Leopold Spinner – among others – had also written works for John. John was somewhat taken aback at the explicitness of the more suggestive sculptures and carvings adorning the entrance hall but was soon cheerfully received by Tippett, reclining on a favourite chaise longue. He didn’t dismiss the idea – as a twenty-three year old he had written a Concerto for flute, oboe, horn and strings and in 1953 came his wonderful Piano Concerto, but pressure of work was always going to militate against a new concerto and inevitably it never materialized. What a misfortune for the repertoire! 

A week or two ago I popped into the Selmer Clarinet Summer School, which was being held at Stowe – the beautiful eighteenth-century mansion where I used to teach. I arrived as Colin Lawson was giving a masterclass. Readers may well know that Colin has recently been appointed the next Director of the Royal College of Music in London – yet another position of great importance filled by a wind player (the oboist George Caird and the trumpeter John Wallace are respectively Principals of the Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music). Colin was talking, with his deep knowledge and authority, on the interpretation of the slow movement of the Mozart Concerto. On returning home I listened to all my (many) recordings and re-read David Etheridge’s fascinating book ‘Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto: The Clarinetist’s View’. However it seems to me that Mozart’s magical music will forever cause musical thinkers to search for the most exquisite shaping and meaning, for it will never reveal its ultimate secrets. Players will always be seeking the perfect performance, and this is part of the reason for its enduring attraction. 

Readers will be aware that rarely will one of my ‘letters’ fail to mention Sir Malcolm Arnold! By the time you read this article, my new biography co-written with Anthony Meredith, entitled Malcolm Arnold: Rogue Genius will be published. The book’s launch is to be celebrated by an all-Arnold concert at the Royal Festival Hall, with Julian Bliss playing the Second Concerto. I have written a new cadenza and feel very humbled to join the list of previous cadenza-writers for this wonderful work! Benny Goodman’s own is short but full of the kind of rapid, jazz-inspired shapes only he could produce. There are distinguished cadenzas by Christopher Palmer (for Thea King’s powerful recording), Richard Rodney Bennett (for Michael Collins’ trenchant reading), and Emma Johnson has written her own. In working on the cadenza, I wanted to demonstrate the very strong link between the melodic material of the first and last movements, by a process of the one transforming itself into the other. Malcolm’s compositional thinking is always economical and very tightly argued – I hope this is also borne out by this new cadenza. 

Finally on the topic of Arnold – I recently made an arrangement, for Clarinet Choir, of his Overture for Wind Octet. It was given its first performance in Washington DC a few weeks ago by a visiting British Clarinet Choir (led by John Mackenzie) and, judging by the applause I hear on the recording, went down very well!

British Clarinet Concertos

In the Summer of 2000 I had the great pleasure of meeting James Gillespie, editor of The Clarinet Journal, during the International Clarinet Association (ICA) convention in Oklahoma. James asked me if I would like to contribute a regular column – an invitation that I found both humbling and daunting! The following ‘Letter from the UK’ was first published in March 2004 in The Clarinet Journal, the official publication of the ICA.

A splendid new CD of ‘British Clarinet Concertos’ has just been issued by Sanctuary Classics, played by the excellent Ian Scott, principal of the Royal Ballet Sinfonia. It includes works by Alan Paul, Jo Horovitz, Guy Woolfenden, Geoffrey Bush, Malcolm Macdonald, Adrian Cruft and Alan Ridout. I suspect many of these works will be new to quite a number of clarinettists. We all know the Finzi concerto (which incidentally has become one of the most requested works on the popular radio station Classic FM) and Malcolm Arnold’s wonderful two concertos (more about the Benny-Goodman-inspired No. 2 later!). Interestingly, in 1941 Benny Goodman commissioned a concerto from Benjamin Britten, who was living in New York during the war. As he was returning to the UK, his manuscripts were impounded by customs who thought they contained secret codes. Presumably, by the time they were retuned to him later the following year he was busy with other projects as he never completed the work. The fascinating first movement remains though, and is recorded by Thea King. 

The Stanford concerto is fairly well-known; a noble work written in the best tradition of early twentieth-century Europe. Arnold Cooke’s concerto deserves more attention. Like all his music for clarinet (the Sonata, the three Songs of Innocence and the Trio for example), it is highly characteristic, tuneful (in the tradition of his teacher Paul Hindemith) and well worth study. The final movement is a gem. There are a number of concertos by composers who have straddled the serious and (what we now seem to call) ‘media’ music genres. A large-scale concerto by Howard Blake (written for Thea King) is particularly notable. Though Blake is best known for his delightful music for the legendary Raymond Briggs cartoon, ‘The Snowman’, his concert music is very important. Jim Parker, who writes delightfully for the British television programme ‘Midsommer Murders’ (featuring extensive clarinet solos) has written an attractive concerto and there is a particularly impressive work by Graham Fitkin, written for David Campbell. 

Of the works on this new CD I would like to dwell on two in particular. Alan Ridout, who, like Malcolm Arnold, was also a pupil of Gordon Jacob, wrote a vast quantity of music, with five symphonies and many concertos among his output. His ‘Concertino for clarinet’ is very short (lasting a little over five minutes) but for intermediate students and a string orchestra of modest achievement it’s a real winner. Alan was sitting at his desk about to begin work on the last movement and waiting for some inspiration, when he heard a wood pigeon cooing outside in his garden. The bird’s five-eight rhythmic pattern therefore forms the basis of the whole movement. 

Guy Woolfenden was director of music at the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon for many years. His music, as you would expect, is skilfully written, colourful and immediate. His clarinet concerto was written in 1985 to celebrate Jack Brymer’s seventieth birthday, and Jack gave the first performance in Warwick that same year. It is a moving work full of glorious melodic writing. Let’s try to encourage players to have a look at these fine works and perhaps even slip one into a programme. Audiences are sure to enjoy them.

To return to Malcolm Arnold’s Second Concerto … Written for Benny Goodman, it is a work that encompasses both the dark and light. The first movement shows the composer at his darkest, having attempted suicide just months before completing the work, but the gorgeous melody of the slow movement began life as part of Malcolm’s score for the film The Sound Barrier. And who can fail to be drawn in to the unashamedly high spirits of the ‘Pre-Goodman Rag’ finale.

Old and new

In the Summer of 2000 I had the great pleasure of meeting James Gillespie, editor of The Clarinet Journal, during the International Clarinet Association (ICA) convention in Oklahoma. James asked me if I would like to contribute a regular column – an invitation that I found both humbling and daunting! The following ‘Letter from the UK’ was first published in December 2003 in The Clarinet Journal, the official publication of the ICA.

At the time of writing, I am currently researching two important clarinet composers from either end of the instrument’s history. About ten years ago I produced an edition of Lefevre’s first five sonatas, published by Oxford University Press, which involved a very enjoyable trip to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris where the manuscripts are held. It’s taken some time, but finally the other seven sonatas are about to join their ‘relatives’ in two further volumes. The middle sonatas are a delight – very tuneful and audience-friendly, and the works are useful both for professional players and good students. We clarinettists need more sonatas to augment our relatively small repertoire of works from the earlier period! Lefevre called these sonatas ‘progressive’ and indeed they live up to that description. The final three get blacker and blacker with more and more notes per square centimetre! But like their predecessors (and remembering of course, that Lefevre himself was a master player and very distinguished teacher of his time) they fit very happily under the fingers. All being well these two new volumes should be released later in 2004. 

Readers will be already familiar with the second composer, Sir Malcolm Arnold; it’s both amazing and exciting that we’re still finding unpublished manuscripts of his, and we’re not finished yet! I recently discovered that Arnold wrote some unaccompanied jazz pieces for clarinet in 1938, although currently these are still lost. I visited him a few weeks ago on his 82nd birthday and found him as perky as ever, having recovered from a recent bout of pneumonia. I have been preparing two of his early works for publication that both include the clarinet – and what gems they are! The first is in fact his very earliest work for wind instruments. The Suite Bourgeoise (mentioned in my previous letter) was written between June 10th and 21st 1940 and has only now, over sixty years later, been published for the first time. It was written for student friends at the Royal College of Music where Malcolm was studying at the time, and was lost for many years, but re-surfaced in 1996. Ruth Arnold, Malcolm’s elder sister, created the title page to the original manuscript and it is to her that we owe the slightly unusual spelling! Originally for flute, oboe and piano, I have also included an alternative clarinet part. It is music of huge charm and wit and reveals Arnold’s interest in a number of contemporary styles and personalities – within the five movements we find popular and dance music, allusions to Les Six and more than a hint of Constant Lambert, whom Arnold admired ‘more than any man in the world’.

The most serious of the five movements, the ‘Prelude’, is an early indication of Arnold’s love for contrapuntal textures – a mode of writing that he was to make much use of in many of his later works. The ‘Tango’ is dedicated to ‘Elaine’ – a friend of Arnold’s who often visited him at his home in Northampton and whom Malcolm remembers as ‘speaking often on one note’. He also suggests, rather unkindly perhaps, that she could only sing one note – F sharp! This is portrayed in the music by the repeated note patterns. At the time of writing the Suite Bourgeoise, Arnold was having composition lessons with Gordon Jacob – a man for whom he had enormous respect. He had, in a typically scurrilous gesture, originally given the next movement a very rude title. (Readers will have to see the publication to find out what it was!) But he thought better of it before showing the music to his teacher! The word is heavily crossed out and replaced by ‘Censored’ to which Arnold appends the more acceptable, but prosaic ‘Dance’. 
The ‘Ballad’ demonstrates the composer’s wonderful gift for melody: it is quite a surprise that this glorious tune didn’t find itself into one of his many films, as material from the next movement did. Devotees of the ‘St Trinian’s’ films will certainly recognise similar music to that of the delightful ‘Valse’, which concludes the suite. It is dedicated to ‘Ugo’, the conductor Hugo Rignold. Before becoming involved with more ‘serious’ music, Rignold was a jazz violinist in the famous Kit-Cat Band. Arnold was also fascinated by the fact that Rignold was an amateur motor-racing enthusiast. This slightly outrageous mix of interests (for a ‘classical’ musician) would have made him an ideal role-model for the somewhat mischievous young composer! 

The second work in preparation is a Grand Fantasia. This was originally written for the composer himself to play along with Richard Adeney (the great flute player and dedicatee of most of his flute works) and a pianist friend (Betty Matthews). However it is well suited for the combination of flute, clarinet and piano, and Arnold was quick to agree to the arrangement. This piece dates from earlier than the Suite Bourgeoise, probably 1938, and was clearly written to give the young virtuosi some fun. It begins with a wonderful nineteenth-century pastiche, reminiscent of all those flamboyant opera fantasies, and then is followed by a jazz waltz, a czardas, a rock-and-roll number and other witty flights of the imagination. And there’s a little of the later Malcolm Arnold in this piece too – altogether it makes for a brilliant and witty concert item!
I’m off for some Christmas pudding now (though the sun will probably be shining when this comes to print!). So, may I wish readers, rather belatedly, a merry Christmas and happy New Year!

 

Summer, songs and a glass of champagne

In the Summer of 2000 I had the great pleasure of meeting James Gillespie, editor of The Clarinet Journal, during the International Clarinet Association (ICA) convention in Oklahoma. James asked me if I would like to contribute a regular column – an invitation that I found both humbling and daunting! The following ‘Letter from the UK’ was first published in September 2003 in The Clarinet Journal, the official publication of the ICA.

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to present a programme of music for voice, clarinet and piano with the theme of ‘summer’. Voice, clarinet and piano is a particularly delightful medium and makes for a very audience-friendly evening. I chose a programme entirely by British composers and thought I would share some of these delightful works with you – some are well-known, but one or two are less so. Long gone are the days when we had to rely solely on Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock!

We began the programme with Thomas Arne’s When Daisies Pied, which has a clarinet obligato part written by the great Victorian virtuoso Henry Lazarus – my teacher’s, teacher’s, teacher! Furthermore, my teacher (John Davies) was in the audience. I love the connections we can discover if we search around a little, and this was the first of a considerable number. Pamela Weston was the editor of the Arne, and also the dedicatee of our next work – the wonderful Three Songs of Innocence by Arnold Cooke. These were written in the late fifties for Pamela’s Klarion Trio (consisting of herself, Jean Broadley and Eileen Nugent) to words by the great poet William Blake. The poignant and remarkably beautiful middle movement, ‘The Shepherd’, is a gem (and reminds me of those haunting Songs of the Auvergne by Cantaloube). When a student at the Royal Academy of Music, I remember going to play Cooke’s Sonata to him. A very quiet, modest and then quite elderly man, after the performance he simply said ‘very neat’ and signed my copy!

A double connection now as we moved on to the splendid Two Nursery Rhymes by Arthur Bliss in 1920. The work was written for Charles Draper, another pupil of Lazarus, and is a charming setting of two poems by Frances Cornford. The second, ‘The Dandelion’, is for voice and clarinet alone. This work has happily been restored to the catalogue after a short while out of print and is a must for anyone’s library. I said there was a double connection – the second is a fascinating one. The first of the two songs, ‘The Ragwort’, is dedicated to Leslie Heward. Heward was a very promising young composer and conductor who tragically died in his early forties. His daughter, Karen Heward, an assistant at Pinewood Studios, subsequently worked with Malcolm Arnold, the composer of our next song. Beauty Haunts the Woods was written when Malcolm was only thirteen – and it’s a remarkable little piece. Set to words by his elder sister, Ruth, it creates a lingering and evocative atmosphere of great sadness – a chilling prophesy of things to come. (It should be played very slowly by the way!) Frequent readers will know of my interest in Malcolm Arnold and, recently, I edited his Suite Bourgeoise – a brilliant piece for Flute, Oboe and piano. Perhaps rather cheekily I have also included an alternative part for clarinet (instead of oboe) in the publication. Performances of this terrific work seem to bring the house down!

Another connection leads us to the next work – the Four Seasonal Songs by Gordon Jacob (Malcolm Arnold’s teacher) first performed by Thea King and written in the early eighties, shortly before Jacob died. Gordon Jacob wrote over seven hundred works, many of which included the clarinet. The first of the set, ‘Summer’, uses old English and the third, ‘Winter’, is a vocalise. Altogether it is a delightful and skilfully written cycle. The penultimate work was my own Six Clerihew Songs – the poems are very funny ‘four liners’ by a rather eccentric cleric, the Reverend Clerihew Bentley, with a great sense of humour.
We concluded our recital with the Scenes from Tyneside by Phyllis Tate. This pre-dates the Jacob by a few years and is quite a large-scale work, lasting around twenty minutes. Phyllis Tate was married to Alan Frank, head of music at Oxford University Press for many years, but perhaps best known to clarinet players as being the other half of the Thurston and Frank tutor. Tate has contributed a number of important pieces to the repertoire, perhaps the finest being the Sonata for clarinet and cello – a work deserving many more outings that it gets. The Scenes from Tyneside comprise six songs and are freely based on somewhat obscure Northumbrian folk-songs. There are many colourful effects – in the third song, for example, the pianist becomes a tambourine player for the duration of the piece! 

After a successful recital we gathered, together with the very friendly and appreciative audience, for a glass of champagne and enjoyed the warm summer evening. Playing music is such an eternal joy!

Nearer the light

In the Summer of 2000 I had the great pleasure of meeting James Gillespie, editor of The Clarinet Journal, during the International Clarinet Association (ICA) convention in Oklahoma. James asked me if I would like to contribute a regular column. These personal reflections are now reprinted with his permission. The following ‘Letter from the UK’ was first published in June 2003 in The Clarinet Journal, the official publication of the ICA. 

The number of fascinating Malcolm Arnold works coming to light is ever growing. On a recent visit to Sir Malcolm’s, I came home with an intriguing work for wind octet. The Overture from Suite for Wind Octet was begun on January 31st 1940 and there are 31 bars completed in pencil. Clearly other projects took over because no more work was done until April when Arnold completed the movement in short score. Sadly he never returned to the work – there are no further movements. I asked a friend to complete the arrangement and so emerged yet another little gem by the young composer. 

Over tea with Arnold recently, we discussed the Octet. Although he wrote it over sixty years ago, that old memory still came up trumps. Arnold recalled three influences behind the octet. The ragtime rhythms, which pervade the work, are an indication of his love for jazz, popular and dance music – styles that were to become such a hallmark of his mature work. He even toyed with calling the work ‘Ragtime’. Secondly, Arnold was fiercely anti-war: indeed in 1942 he shot himself in the foot to avoid military service. The middle section, made up of aggressive chords and heavily accented melodic lines, is surely a powerful proclamation of the looming clouds of war and the ever-advancing armies. (The final movement of his Wind Quintet is much in the same vein.) The third influence is the composer’s admiration for the music of Constant Lambert, indeed Arnold told me that ‘there is no man in this world whom I admire more’. Lambert was another composer who had assimilated more popular styles into his music, works such as Rio Grande and the ballet scores – music for which the young Arnold had enormously high regard. Although it is a shame that Arnold didn’t add more movements to this projected suite, we nevertheless have yet another short but worthy work to add to his oeuvres. Like all his early works, the overture was probably written for fellow students at the Royal College of Music, so it was very fitting that the first UK performance was given by students at the RCM’s Junior Department. It is published by Queen’s Temple Publications under the title Overture for Wind Octet. 

Arnold aside, some months ago I took two of my students, Charlotte Swift and Jonathan Howse to Germany to have a lesson with the great Karl Leister. At the time of writing, Charlotte is principal clarinet in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (and indeed took part in that first performance of the Overture) and Jonathan has a similarly high position in the National Youth Wind Orchestra. On our arrival we went straight to the Berlin Radio building where we met Karl in an enormous studio. Karl is both uncompromising and hugely inspiring as a teacher, always demanding tremendous control and ceaseless flights of the imagination. During the day he worked on Brahms and Spohr, Weber and Francaix. At one point, Karl made his point through a thought-provoking anecdote. He was listening to a student and at the end of a phrase, asked the student, “What are you thinking about?” “Nothing really,” came the answer. “I can tell,” Karl responded. He would always want to know what was in your mind as each phrase went by and from time to time he would present his own, often deeply-felt interpretation. We were all much moved by his description of the final coda of the first movement of Brahms F minor sonata as ‘life’s resolution and a kind of final acceptance of the mortality of man’. Ultimately it doesn’t matter exactly what you think – but with such a weighty thought in mind, one can hardly give an inexpressive performance. We talked about technique, dynamics, rhythm, sound and projection. At one point during a tense musical moment in the first movement of Spohr’s 2nd Concerto, Karl’s mobile phone rang. “Good heavens! It’s Spohr,” he said.

And finally, to a performance of a wonderful clarinet quartet by Barrington Pheloung that I gave recently. Pheloung wrote the music for the film about the life of the great cellist Jacqueline du Pré, Hilary and Jackie, and the spectacular TV series Inspector Morse. Nearer The Light Now is a very personal work. It represents the composer himself, a devoutly religious man, living in rural bliss in some of the best countryside the east of England has to offer. The music moves from moments of utter stillness and serenity to passages of extreme energy – very well conceived for clarinets, and a real spiritual experience.

Lost and found, the remarkable story of Malcolm Arnold's Wind Quintet

In the Summer of 2000 I had the great pleasure of meeting James Gillespie, editor of The Clarinet Journal, during the International Clarinet Association (ICA) convention in Oklahoma. James asked me if I would like to contribute a regular column. These personal reflections are now reprinted with his permission. The following ‘Letter from the UK’ was first published in March 2003 in The Clarinet Journal, the official publication of the ICA.

When flipping through the Malcolm Arnold catalogue for some purpose of information gathering, my eye has often alighted on the following: 1942 Wind Quintet – Manuscript lost. Like most wind players, I love the Three Shanties and have played them many times. I’ve long wondered what this tantalising quintet, written just a few months before the Shanties, might be like. Therefore I could hardly contain my excitement when, in early October 2002, I had a phone call from Malcolm’s carer Anthony Day, who told me the quintet had been found and asked me to prepare it for publication. Having brought the manuscript home from Attleborough, I then embarked on some detective work in an attempt to piece together the story of the quintet since its composition, almost exactly 60 years ago. This is what I discovered...

Arnold completed the manuscript on December 20th 1942, when the Second World War was at its height. (Malcolm was fiercely anti-war: indeed he had shot himself in the foot to escape war service.) The quintet was written for the five principal wind players in the London Philharmonic Orchestra (the LPO, in which Malcolm himself was principal trumpet): Richard Adeney (flute); Michael Dobson (oboe); Stephen Waters (clarinet); Charles Gregory (horn) and George Alexandra (bassoon). It had been thought that they gave the first performance on June 7th 1943 at Trinity College of Music in London, but this cannot be confirmed. However on 8th August 1944, the LPO’s chairman Charles Gregory arranged to have the work broadcast by the BBC from their Bristol Overseas Service studios. The players settled down to a full day’s rehearsing when, quite unexpectedly, they were told that the broadcast was in fact to be that very day! Their plans for a long leisurely rehearsal became closer to ten minutes! A quick read-through, a few minutes practising the tricky bits – and then the red light went on. When it went off some fifteen minutes later, the players were unusually stressed, but relieved that the performance had not actually broken down. 

And now the plot thickens … The manuscript score and parts (written out by the composer himself) were then lent to the Dennis Brain Quintet – Gareth Morris, Leonard Brain, Stephen Waters, Dennis Brain and Cecil James. (Stephen Waters was the link between the two groups and had presumerably alerted the Brain Quintet to this new piece.) Then all went silent – no sight nor sound of the quintet until Jonathan Wortley – Stephen Waters’ executor, came across an interesting handwritten manuscript about two years after the death of the clarinettist. Nestling among some inconsequential music was the Arnold Quintet, minus the horn part. My friend, the clarinettist, teacher and biographer Pamela Weston not only knew about Stephen Waters, but also had coincidentally received some lessons from him during the war years. She remembers him as being a fine teacher and player but also as rather nervous, scatter-brained and slightly absent-minded. She recalls a bus journey they took together on one of those old red London buses with the pole on to which passengers can grasp as they got on and off. She recalls Stephen getting quite tangled up on this – his clarinet, clothes and indeed self, requiring the young Pamela to attempt to disentangle her teacher! I can only assume that, as librarian to the quintet (after perhaps Dennis had taken his part) Stephen put the work in a box for safe-keeping, and then completely forgot about it!

Typesetting the work – much of which I did myself – was tremendously exciting; gradually seeing the three movements come to life again. Many sonorities and musical ideas appear again in the Shanties and, although this is early Arnold, it will certainly be seen as a very important and significant work. The first movement is tuneful and full of those surprises Arnold loves to introduce in his music – to keep his audiences awake, as he once told me! Those of you who don’t know the early piano sonata (written a couple of months before this quintet) will learn much about his style from that fine work. There is no shortage of jazz-inspired ideas but they are always coloured by that Arnold edge. The second movement is a fiendish scherzo – full of amazing cross rhythms and of immense energy. The final movement is a March and the most emotionally charged. It is clearly very strongly anti-war, with severe and angry dissonances, mocking fanfares, angular and brutal melodic and rhythmic shapes.

As it happened, I had a quintet concert arranged for November 6th at Hartwell House, Oxford, so hastily altered the programme to include the first ‘revival’ performance of the quintet. After a few phone calls I was excited to discover that Richard Adeney, the flute player at that first performance and for whom Arnold wrote all his main flute works, was still very much alive and well. At the age of eighty-two the dapper and sprightly Richard was delighted to attend the performance and spoke to the audience with his memories of Malcolm and the work. Interestingly enough, he had no recollection of the Trinity College performance; but he did remember well that manic broadcast from Bristol! We will never be really sure whether that initial performance at Trinity ever did take place, which makes ours the first live performance – 60 years after the completion of the work.

Malcolm Arnold’s Wind Quintet is now available from Queen’s Temple Publications. It’s without doubt a major addition to the wind quintet repertoire and a very important musical re-discovery of recent times.

Looking backwards and forwards

In the Summer of 2000 I had the great pleasure of meeting James Gillespie, editor of The Clarinet Journal, during the International Clarinet Association (ICA) convention in Oklahoma. James asked me if I would like to contribute a regular column. These personal reflections are now reprinted with his permission. The following ‘Letter from the UK’ was first published in December 2002 in The Clarinet Journal, the official publication of the ICA. 

A few weeks ago, I was delighted to receive an invite from Pamela Weston to a launch party for her new book Yesterday’s Clarinettists: a sequel. I picked up my teacher John Davies from his apartment in Kew and we drove down to the south coast. Surprisingly, the weather held up for us and together with the players Colin Bradbury, Paul Harvey, June Emerson (publisher) and others, we settled down to a wonderful lunch and chat. Among many other fascinating bits of information that emerged was the fact that Pamela’s mother and John’s father both played in the same orchestra in Eastbourne – they were virtual neighbours as children, though it was many years before they actually met!

Pamela’s book is full of gems. Being a pupil of a pupil of a pupil of Henry Lazarus, one of my personal favourites concerns the great patriarch of English clarinet playing himself. In September 1872, Lazarus organised a concert at the Royal Albert Hall. It was to be a concert ‘to enable all classes to enjoy music at exceedingly low prices.’ Indeed many of the tickets were priced at 3 pence. The punters certainly got their money’s worth – there was sufficient music in the programme to fill up two or three evenings by today’s standards!

Part of my work is as an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. I also do quite a bit of ‘behind the scenes’ work and I’m presently involved in coordinating a new series of exams for young players which are to be called Music Medals. Within the state education system in the UK, Music Services provide lessons for anyone who wishes to take up an instrument. Owing to the numbers involved, a lot of pupils are taught in groups and in the hands of a skilful and imaginative teacher such teaching is both extremely effective and successful. This series of exams has been designed to provide structure to such teaching, and will include playing both solo and ensemble music and a choice of ‘musicianship’ tests: sight-reading or improvising a completion to a given musical idea. (This is very timely in view of the fact that the Government has recently stated that every child should have access to instrumental music lessons.) The Music Medals team have been commissioning various composers to write specially-dedicated ensemble music for use in these exams, and as a result some wonderful stuff has been popping through my letterbox. If nothing else, the repertoire for small ensembles will be greatly enhanced.

In this column I have previously mentioned ‘Unbeaten Tracks’ – a collection of new pieces that I have recently edited, featuring eight clarinet pieces by contemporary composers. The word ‘contemporary’ often conjures up images of incomprehensible rhythms, mutiphonics and extreme technical difficulties. In this volume (published by Faber Music) we’ve tried to put together works that are stimulating and engaging, whilst being completely approachable technically. None of the pieces use contemporary techniques as such (except a bit of key tapping!) but rather, each composer has used the opportunity to explore their own conception of melody at the start of the twenty-first century. In this way it makes for a particularly interesting ‘document’. Perhaps the most traditional sort of melody has been contributed by Christopher Gunning (composer of much music for television and film) and the most futuristic, by Lloyd Moore. The Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe has written a charming miniature ‘Reef Singing’ and there is an effective Brittenesque March by Huw Watkins. For anyone interested in broadening their repertoire, this volume is well worth a look.
On a lighter note, I’m shortly off to South East Asia to give a series of workshops and classes. Before I go, my quintet has a recital in which we are including a rather whimsical piece of mine called The Unhappy Aardvark (for Wind Quintet plus narrator). We were to be joined by Bruce Boa as the narrator (perhaps best known for playing the part of the General in Star Wars!). Regrettably Bruce fell over last week and can’t walk at the moment. But he has arranged for a friend to take his place and that friend is the actor Shane Rimmer – star of three James Bond and two Superman movies, and voice of Scott Tracy in Thunderbirds. I can’t wait!

Music fit for a Queen

In the Summer of 2000 I had the great pleasure of meeting James Gillespie, editor of The Clarinet Journal, during the International Clarinet Association (ICA) convention in Oklahoma. James asked me if I would like to contribute a regular column. These personal reflections are now reprinted with his permission. The following ‘Letter from the UK’ was first published in September 2002 in The Clarinet Journal, the official publication of the ICA. 

Today is the Queen’s Golden Jubilee! The sun is shining; red, white and blue bunting adorns the front of houses and shops everywhere, and thousands have been sleeping in tents on the pavement overnight to catch a glimpse of the Queen as she rides past in her splendid golden carriage. I’ve just returned from giving a special Jubilee concert at one of England’s distinguished stately homes. It was a concert of music by composers who have had some connection with the second Elizabethan age, and included Walton’s Façade, some Elgar, Finzi and Richard Rodney Bennett (and I rather cheekily slipped in one of my own chamber pieces – a trio for flute, clarinet and piano). It’s interesting how we rely on music by such composers in putting together programmes for this kind of event. So much music written by contemporary composers, though of great value, remains elusive to your enthusiastic, but ‘non-specialist’, music-loving audience. But it’s not only the ‘non-specialists’ who are unfamiliar with this music – I wonder how many of us could really say we know any of the music of Oliver Knussen, Thomas Ades, George Benjamin, James Macmillan, Robin Holloway, or a host of other hard-working contemporary British composers? And regrettably I would have to include myself to a degree; but I am trying to broaden my knowledge and I do my best to listen and learn a couple of new works each week. I suppose it is still in the nature of things that we are both suspicious and wary of anything ‘new’ in the world of the creative arts. A great pity really. 

As part of the Jubilee celebrations, the Queen invited an audience of twelve thousand into her (evidently quite large!) garden for a concert of classical music. I was delighted that among some internationally-renowned names in the music world, my erstwhile pupil Julian Bliss had been asked to take part. This of course is wonderful for the clarinet world and my hope is that thousands of young people will identify with him and will wish to try their hand at playing the clarinet. Julian always communicates a tremendous sense of joy that his audience cannot fail to recognise. Here in the UK, many young people want to learn the guitar, drums, saxophone or vocals. I hope Julian will become something of a role model and inspire many to take up instruments that perhaps don’t have quite so much ‘street cred’ but are nevertheless providers of a great deal of potential and lasting pleasure. 

We have also recently experienced the bi-annual BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. As with all competitions, this event arouses strong feelings among the musical fraternity. The usual questions and dilemmas again present themselves – and we all have our own well-rehearsed points of view. But whatever we think, competitions are very much part of our culture. As long as we approach them with wisdom and circumspection they are ultimately valuable. As it was, the competition was won by a prodigious twelve-year-old violinist. But the wind section was represented by the young clarinettist Sarah Williamson – a name I’m sure we will be hearing much of over the years. Her performance of the Copland Concerto displayed immense colour, brilliance and imagination. In a way it’s a bold choice for such an event – the long lyrical opening movement is not perhaps ideal competition-winning fare. But Sarah is clearly not a musician to be compromised by such thoughts and she played it with immaculate control. The second movement was breathtaking in its dazzling technical command and breadth of musical colour. 

And finally, by the time you read this Pamela Weston’s two important books, Clarinet Virtuosi of the Past and More Clarinet Virtuosi of the Past will have been re-published by Emerson Edition. These are books that should be on every clarinet player’s shelf. And Pamela has just finished yet another volume entitled Yesterday’s Clarinettists: a sequel, which will be available by late July (also Emerson). Pamela tells me that she has included information on over 600 new names as well as new facts concerning over 400 of the players discussed in the first two volumes. Amazing!

A trip through time

In the Summer of 2000 I had the great pleasure of meeting James Gillespie, editor of The Clarinet Journal, during the International Clarinet Association (ICA) convention in Oklahoma. James asked me if I would like to contribute a regular column. These personal reflections are now reprinted with his permission. The following ‘Letter from the UK’ was first published in June 2002 in The Clarinet Journal, the official publication of the ICA. 

I was having lunch with the clarinettist, teacher and biographer Pamela Weston a few weeks ago and our wide-ranging conversation turned, for a time, to the fascinating subject of clarinet dynasties. Consequently, for this letter, I thought I might consider my particular ‘dynasty’ and discover something of the historical background that has coloured and shaped my own approach to teaching and playing the clarinet.

I was taught by John Davies, who was Senior Professor of clarinet at the Royal Academy of Music in London for over forty years from 1951. John is a great teacher – his work is based on an understanding that education is all about ‘drawing out’ not ‘putting in’. His pupils are taught to think for themselves; to develop a flexible sound that is successful in chamber music, in an orchestral section, in jazz or as a classical soloist. He teaches his pupils to consider the broader picture and in so doing, develop a parallel interest and love of the other great creative arts – literature, painting and drama. He instils a confidence in his pupils, allowing them to embrace the highly-charged musical world without arrogance or superiority. His pupils number international soloists, generations of highly-distinguished orchestral and chamber music players and many fine teachers. 

John grew up at a time before the proliferation of recordings; at a time before our obsession with ‘sound’. Up until about the middle of the twentieth century, you simply played the clarinet; the sound was not cause for great debate and much soul-searching as it is now. John recalls that his teacher, George Anderson, didn’t devote much teaching time to sound; no attempt was made to make a particular kind of sound – you simply developed a clean and refined tone – there was no more to it than that. In John’s opinion, it was the growth of jazz that brought about the major development of interest and potential for sound quality. Most players of the time employed the more severe military embouchure and a reasonably narrow lay mouthpiece to produce the type of sound so beautifully encapsulated in the playing of the legendary Jack Thurston (a player for whom John has much regard). It was the jazz players who brought a new, slacker embouchure and consequently a wider sound and vibrato to their playing. The English player Reginald Kell brought such features to the ‘classical’ clarinet sound and in doing so, significantly changed the course of clarinet playing thereafter. The sound became a central ‘feature’; there was now a choice to be made. 

John was appointed to take over from his distinguished teacher George Anderson, who died that year, having devoted the final ten years of his life to his Academy students. Anderson was born in 1867 – Brahms had yet to write his Sonatas, and the great Weber works had been around for little over fifty years. He was principally an orchestral player and was to spend nearly forty years in the London Symphony Orchestra. He also played in the Scottish Orchestra, the Beecham Opera Company and the BBC Military Band. He gave one of the first performances of Coleridge-Taylor’s wonderful but sadly neglected Clarinet Quintet. He played on the Boehm system, which at the time was still quite a novelty. Pamela Weston writes that he is reputed to have made a sweet and delicate tone. John remembers that he took care of his pupils (for example, when John asked to be released early from a lesson owing to the birth of his son, after initial outrage Anderson soon relented and took John out for a celebratory lunch!). Among his other distinguished pupils number Georgina Dobree, Bernard Walton and indeed Pamela Weston had a number of lessons with him. 

Anderson was a pupil of the great nineteenth-century player Henry Lazarus who was born in London in 1815 – the year of the Battle of Waterloo and some months before Weber composed his Grand Duo. Lazarus was a military bandsman but clearly an exceptional player, both orchestrally and as a soloist. He was also an enthusiast, commissioning works and arrangements by living composers of the time and writing many showpieces himself. He also wrote one of the most influential tutors of the time: his New and Modern Method of 1881. Though long and comprehensive it is nevertheless, of its time, user-friendly and takes into account the need for cumulative learning (unlike one of my favourite contemporary clarinet methods that states ‘The student should commit to memory the fingerings and use of the keys before attempting to produce the sound – see diagrams.’ There follows about 8 pages of complex fingerings taking the beginner up to top C – 3 octaves above middle C!). Lazarus taught both at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music; he recommended the modern Boehm system (though never actually played it himself) and was clearly a great character. He lived for ninety years and his influence over clarinet playing in Britain in the twentieth century and beyond cannot be understated.

I’ve always believed it very important to have a sense of history – to know about one’s own time and the events and people that have shaped one’s own life. I often think of those words by the celebrated writer John Keats, ‘To know your past is to know yourself’. I always feel a great sense of history sitting with John Davies in his living room in south London, where, hanging on the wall, he has a signed picture of his teacher’s teacher – the great Henry Lazarus. It is at once humbling and a source of great energy.

Buried Treasure

In the Summer of 2000 I had the great pleasure of meeting James Gillespie, editor of The Clarinet Journal, during the International Clarinet Association (ICA) convention in Oklahoma. James asked me if I would like to contribute a regular column. These personal reflections are now reprinted with his permission. The following ‘Letter from the UK’ was first published in March 2002 in The Clarinet Journal, the official publication of the ICA.

Regular readers will now know of my interest in discovering and promoting ‘buried treasures’ of the clarinet repertoire. I wonder how many know the name of the English composer Robin Milford? Milford was a contemporary of Gerald Finzi and his music is much in the same mould. Connected to a number of famous educational institutions, he began as a pupil at Rugby School (where the composer Arthur Bliss had studied previously), went on to the Royal College of Music where his teachers included Holst and Vaughan Williams, and later taught at Ludgrove and Downe House schools. But, since his death in 1959, his work has been largely forgotten. At this present time, there is only one Milford clarinet work in print: the Lyrical Movement written in 1948 for the clarinettist Alan Frank. Frank was editor at the Oxford University Press (OUP), and co-wrote the famous Thurston and Frank Clarinet Method. The Lyrical Movement, first published by OUP, subsequently went out of print and is now re-published by Thames Publishing. It is well worth a look; a delightful movement, rather sad and wistful but elegantly written for the instrument. In addition, in 1933 Milford wrote a Concertino for Clarinet and Strings but this, sadly, has been lost. The Phantasy Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet was also composed in 1933, and in 1948 a Trio for clarinet, cello and piano for Pauline Juler, a top clarinettist of the day.

As well as the Lyrical Movement I also knew of some lovely pieces for flute and piano so a year or two ago, I decided to undertake some research into Milford’s work. This research took me to the famous Bodleian Library in the heart of Oxford. The Bodleian own many of Milford’s manuscripts and I was very excited about what I might find there. It is a very grand and dusty place and before I was allowed in, I had to sign a document swearing never to burn the place down (yet another wonderful old Oxford University tradition!). It is an intimidating building. You don’t see any books or manuscripts – they are all kept well-hidden in deep vaults. You have to make a request, in writing, to the rather severe librarian, and, after a long wait, the item will finally be brought to you. But the long wait in that stark annex was well worth it! Among the manuscripts I asked to see was the Clarinet Quintet; twenty-four pages of neat pen-and-ink writing. The second page bears the interesting inscription, written in pencil in Milford’s hand, that ‘the material of this piece furnished me later with the 1st movement of my violin concerto’. (This particular work was written some four years later, but I suspect it has probably received few performances since its first under the baton of Clarence Raybould in 1938.) 

Milford’s closest living relative is his niece, Marion Milford. My friend Christopher (Kiffer) Finzi, Gerald’s son, knows her well and offered to contact her for me. It has taken about four years to do so! But, to my delight, a few weeks ago I received a letter from Kiffer saying that she was very pleased indeed to give my publishing company, Queen’s Temple Publications, permission to publish the Clarinet Quintet. The piece is somewhat rhapsodic in character and the clarinet writing is highly characteristic, and not too demanding. It begins ‘pp’ and ends ‘ppp’ but journeys through moments of great lyricism and drama. Alan Frank may have played it, but sadly he died a few years ago, and I can find no trace of any performance. Perhaps one of the educational establishments with which Milford was connected might be the venue for the ‘first’ performance, nearly seventy years after the Quintet’s composition! I hope clarinet players around the world will wish to explore this small but significant unknown musical treasure.