British Clarinet Sonatas Vol 2

Collins Michael Mchale Michael

Format
Audio
Published
26 March 2013
ISBN
0095115175828

British Clarinet Sonatas Vol 2

Collins Michael Mchale Michael

This is Volume 2 in the series ‘British Clarinet Sonatas’, in\nwhich Michael Collins is joined by the pianist Michael McHale. BBC\nMusic awarded five stars to Volume 1, and wrote: ‘Collin’s\nclarinet-playing mesmerises the ear: the closing phrase of\nStanford’s ‘Caoine’ movement shows what a player in this league can\nconvey in just two quiet notes. Without snatching the limelight,\nMichael McHale’s accompanying finds a range of keyboard colours in,\nabove all, the works by Ireland and Howells, making their\nindividual sound-worlds seem unexpectedly subtle and rich.’ On this\ndisc the pair turns to works for clarinet and piano by Arthur\nBenjamin, Edward Gregson, Joseph Horovitz, Sir Malcolm Arnold, and\nArnold Cook.

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Arthur Benjamin was Australian-born, but lived out much of his\nlife in England. In its melodies, harmonies, and rhythms, his Le\nTombeau de Ravel reflects a deep and long-standing admiration for\nthe music of the French composer – the title itself pays tribute to\nRavel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. But whereas Ravel’s Tombeau\nconsists of a prelude and several dances, Benjamin’s is a sequence\nof ‘Valse-caprices’, which has more in common with a different work\nby Ravel, the Valses nobles et sentimentales for piano and for\norchestra.

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Edward Gregson completed his five Tributes in 2010, having\nstarted the first of the set some twenty years earlier. Each of the\nTributes is written as homage to one of five noted\ntwentieth-century composers who wrote memorably for the clarinet in\nsolo or chamber works. In his own words, Gregson ‘tried to invade\nthe stylistic worlds’ of these composers – namely Poulenc, Finzi,\nStravinsky, Messiaen, and Bartók – in much the same way that Arthur\nBenjamin had channelled Ravel in Le Tombeau de Ravel.

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Joseph Horovitz was born in Vienna, but immigrated to England as\na boy, and has lived in London for more than seventy years. His\noutput includes operas, ballets, choral works, chamber music,\nseveral pieces for brass band, and of course this Sonatina for\nclarinet and piano, written in 1981 and first performed by Gervase\nde Peyer and Gwenneth Pryor at the Wigmore Hall, London later that\nyear.

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Also on this disc are Sir Malcolm Arnold’s Sonatina for clarinet\nand piano, written between 1948 and 1951 for the eminent British\nclarinettist Frederick Thurston, and Arnold Cooke’s Sonata of 1959.\nCooke was a student of Paul Hindemith’s in Berlin, and this work is\nstrongly inspired by Hindemith’s trademark compositional use of\ntraditional tonal construction, and clear, cool contrapuntal\ntextures.

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