Richard Strauss / Duet-Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon (Harold Wright & Sherman Walt)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 มิ.ย. 2024
- Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Duet-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon with string orchestra & harp (1947)
00:00 - Allegro moderato
06:25 - Andante
09:37 - Rondo. Allegro ma non troppo
Harold Wright, clarinet
Sherman Walt, bassoon
Boston Symphony Orchestra, dir. Seiji Ozawa (broadcast performance of 12 March 1988)
"Richard Strauss composed the Duet-Concertino in late 1947, completing the score on December 16. It was first performed in Lugano, Switzerland, on April 4, 1948, with Otmar Nussio conducting a small orchestral ensemble from the orchestra of the Italian-Swiss Radio. The score bears the dedication 'Hugo Burghauser, dem Getreuen' ('to my faithful Hugo Burghauser'); the dedicatee had been the bassoonist of the Vienna Philharmonic.
In October 1947, the eighty-three-year-old Richard Strauss made his first journey by airplane to accept an invitation to London, which allowed him to see some of his old friends, including Dr. Ernst Roth, his publisher. No doubt he hoped, too, that this journey would allow him to 'thaw' some of his royalties, which had been frozen in England during the war. (Two years earlier he had moved to Switzerland in the hope of receiving some royalties, which would not come to him as long as he remained in Germany.) In England Strauss was curt with the press, having little patience with the persistence of reporters who asked him what his plans were; to them he said simply, 'Well, to die.' But the old man still had music in him. Before his death two years later he turned out two substantial last compositions in a glorious 'Indian summer' of his life. Of the two pieces, the Duet-Concertino is as rarely heard as the eloquent Four Last Songs are familiar.
Though the Duet-Concertino did not take palpable shape until 1947, Strauss had been thinking about it for some time. A year earlier he had written to the eventual dedicatee, Hugo Burghauser, a close friend and former bassoonist of the Vienna Philharmonic, who had moved to New York: 'I am even busy with an idea for a double concerto for clarinet and bassoon, thinking especially of your beautiful tone -- nevertheless apart from a few sketched out themes it still remains no more than an intention... Perhaps it would interest you; my father always used to say, "It was Mozart who wrote most beautifully for the bassoon." But then he was also the one to have all the most beautiful thoughts, coming straight down from the skies!'
Finding a reference to Strauss's idolized Mozart in immediate juxtaposition to the first inkling of the Duet-Concertino should alert us to a certain Mozartean flavor that the score shares with many of Strauss's late works. Not that the piece is in any way a pastiche: rather it translates much of what Strauss saw as the soul of the classical era into a new guise. The concertante working out of two solo instruments, echoed by a second concertante relationship between the solo and massed strings, recalls the spirit -- without attempting to preserve the letter -- of classical forms.
At some stage in the planning of the work, Strauss told conductor Clemens Krauss that he was thinking of Hans Christian Andersen's story 'The Swineherd,' in which a prince courts a beautiful princess by disguising himself as a swineherd at her father's palace. Later Strauss wrote to Burghauser to tell him that the clarinet was a dancing princess, with the bassoon representing the grotesque attempts of a bear to imitate her. Eventually she is won over by the bear and dances with it. Strauss told Burghauser, 'So you too will turn into a prince and live happily ever after.' In the end, though, the Duet-Concertino is pure music-making. Its three movements run together without break, but the first two are quite brief and serve essentially as an elaborate preface to the closing rondo." - Steven Ledbetter
Painting: Human Ancestors, Nicholas Roerich - เพลง
![[NYCP] R. Strauss - Duet Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon (Inn-Hyuck Cho, William Short)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/e9L-loTLfCg/mqdefault.jpg)
The best clarinetist of XX century
Here is a synopsis I wrote long ago of the Duo Concertante.
I don't think any other clarinet players have understood it this way before.
----------------------------------------------------------
Duo Concertante by Richard Strauss
I have never heard anyone explain the Duo Concertante this way.
Richard Strauss and his wife, Pauline, had a tumultuous life together and they loved it that way. They met when he was conducting one of his operas and she was singing a leading role. During one rehearsal, she had a tantrum and threw a score at him. That led to their long, devoted, tumultuous life together. When he was away conducting, he would say he was bored and needed to get back to the excitement of his marriage. When he died, she cried for six months and then died herself. Friends said they never heard anyone sob that way.
The Duo Concertante is a ‘tone poem’ of this relationship. It is in three sections, Meeting, Bonding and Marriage. The clarinet is Pauline and the bassoon is Richard himself. It begins with a very beautiful clarinet melody. The bassoon soon tries to interject with “but I… but I… but I… but I…” etc. and the clarinet responds by throwing the score. The piece continues with the wrath and then mellows out leading to the slow middle section, which the bassoon starts with the outpouring of Richard’s feelings for Pauline. She responds in kind, and the music evolves with the wonderful intertwining of the clarinet and bassoon (and the couple). The third section starts with the bassoon playing a rising theme - and the clarinet responding, contrarily, with the same theme inverted. This section has many opposing lines between the clarinet and bassoon as the couple enjoys their emotional fisticuffs. A new little sixteenth note flourish is added showing that Pauline may be a bit frivolous and not too profound. This phrase always annoyed me until I discovered its meaning. The piece ends with a rising scale in the clarinet with the clarinet getting to the last note -- before the bar line, a final exclamation point to their marriage!
The only recording coming close to this interpretation is by Harold Wright because of its its sensitive, romantic abandon.
No one today interprets Strauss with as much abandon as Strauss did himself in the few recordings in which he conducts some of his tone poems. The Duo Concertante is ripe for new, more daring performances.
Harold Wright was one of the greatest artists of all time. He had the most singing and joyfully expressive way about playing the clarinet that I rarely hear anymore. Thank you for posting this!
I hear this tonight. I love this playing by Harold Wright. So beautiful. I am glad we share similar feelings about this generation of players of whom Wright was one of the best.
No one composes tone poems as beautiful as Richard Strauss. This is magnificent. I would loved to have heard the world premiere live. He composed this at age 83? How amazing he was! Thank you for posting this.
Great comments about the clarinet. Wanted also to say that the bassoonist Sherman Walt (RIP) is also amazing, and it was wonderful to hear this recording.
I had no idea this had been released! Nobody had a tone like Buddy Wright! It was the prettiest sound I ever heard. It simply "shimmered". I was lucky enough to count him as a teacher. A great performance of this fiendishly difficult piece. Thank you Mr. Walt and Wright. You've made my week--RIP.
Wright was always my model--and this is some of the best examples of his great clarinet playing and artistry. Still I've never heard anyone to equal him---So many people praise him, yet they bad mouth french embouchure playing--like there's no connection between his results and his technique.
Wow!! One of the finest performances I've ever heard, and that it's a live performance is even more amazing. This recording actually captures the absolute beauty of Mr. Wright's sound, sadly, many recordings do not. Thanks for posting.
So incredibly beautiful. I have goosebumps all over. Thank you for sharing this piece.
Reference standard for beautiful playing. Thank you for posting this!
Having heard almost all of the top symphony clarinetists in person and in recordings, I have found none with the ability to play as expressively with incomparable beauty as Wright! From the softest to the strongest dynamic level his tone maintains its tonal center, pitch and depth from the bottom to the very top of the range. He can increase the dynamic on any note without any loss of timbre all done with effortlessness. It is a joy to experience his artistry!
Totally agree! He is in a class by himself!!
"incomparable"---that's the right word for Wright.
Amazing Cl. sound,beautiful.-Ron Shields
Muchas gracias
muy buen registro
SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
CHAPEAU !
WUNDERSCHÖN !
Greatest of them all.-Ron Shields
That's beautiful music from the start (0:00) to 6.24!
Jordi Ventura HAH! Wait, what about the rest of the piece!?!? :-D
Artur Korotin The rest of the piece is ok too!!
😍
genial..........¡
At the end of his long life, with the noticeable rexception of the four last liedeer, R. Strauss did not use any more the large orchestra in which he had excelled for half a century to concetrate on string orchestra or chamber ensembles. Here, the clarinet and the bassoon are opposed only to a string orchestra and one harp.