Clarinet FRASER LANGTON Clarinet JAMES WILLSHIRE Piano TRIO DRAMATIS Rory Boyle (B
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Rory Boyle Music for clarinet FRASER LANGTON clarinet JAMES WILLSHIRE piano TRIO DRAMATIS Rory Boyle (b. 1951) Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano Music for clarinet 1 I. Fast [2.48] 2 II. Slow with tenderness [3.37] FRASER LANGTON clarinet 3 III. Brightly [2.12] JAMES WILLSHIRE piano 4 Burble [7:12] TRIO DRAMATIS for solo clarinet Fraser Langton clarinet James Willshire piano Four Bagatelles Rosalind Ventris viola for clarinet and piano 5 No. 1 [3:27] 6 No. 2 [3:18] 7 No. 3 [3.10] 8 No. 4 [1:30] 9 Tatty’s Dance [2:24] version for clarinet and piano Dramatis Personae for clarinet and piano 10 1. Rogue [3:12] Delphian Records and the artists are grateful to the Hope Scott Trust and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland for their generous support in sponsoring the production of this recording. 11 2. Shadow [4:53] 12 3. Fool [4:09] Recorded on 4-6 September 2016 at the Clarinets: Buffet RC Prestige in B flat and A Join the Delphian mailing list: Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow Mouthpiece: Vandoren B40 13 lyre www.delphianrecords.co.uk/join Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter Ligature: Vandoren optimum 13 Di Tre Re e io [18:10] Like us on Facebook: 24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks Reeds: Vandoren V12 strength 3 www.facebook.com/delphianrecords for clarinet, viola and piano 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Piano: Steinway model D, 2007, serial no. Design: Drew Padrutt 576595 Follow us on Twitter: Booklet editor: Henry Howard Piano technician: Alasdair McLean @delphianrecords Total playing time [60:08] Cover art © Bay Bryan Viola: Nicolò Amati, 1619 Session photography © Mallard Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK All tracks except 4 are premiere recordings Productions www.delphianrecords.co.uk Notes on the music Craft and invention are indivisible attributes second subject before cultivating a lively blend work’s premiere in January 2012. ‘Two possible Syncopations and metrical shifts give a ragtime of Rory Boyle’s music, set to work in harness of new and existing thematic material in a short definitions of the word burble,’ notes Rory feel to the score, but also call to mind the light- from the simplest to the most complex of development section: the clarinet’s steep-falling Boyle, ‘are a gurgling or bubbling sound and a hearted spirit of nineteenth-century bagatelles; his compositions. He learned of their mutual intervals give voice to the former while the rapid excited flow of speech both of which are the piece, however, contains room for gallows dependence as a boy chorister at St George’s piano echoes fragments of the latter. A faithful portrayed in the music in various ways.’ The humour and for an eerie clarinet cadenza before Chapel, Windsor, and went on to develop the recapitulation of the movement’s opening piece exploits the tonal and timbral possibilities its course is run. Bagatelle No. 2 forms around a skills required to unite them, taking composition restores a sense of order and stability which of alternative fingerings, a technique first repeated D in the piano’s right hand. The clarinet lessons from Frank Spedding at the Royal is undermined by a questioning conclusion, explored by the composer in his bassoon engages in a duet with the piano’s left-hand Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. A a tailpiece crafted from the second subject concerto, That Blessed Wood, and also used to part which breaks down to leave a meandering postgraduate scholarship enabled Boyle to married to a witty closing dialogue between the great effect in the Shadow section of Dramatis central section, improvisatory in style, before study with Lennox Berkeley, a master of formal two instruments. Personae. Langton provided Boyle with a list of the heartbeat of recurring Ds is re-established technique and champion of its value as the the alternative fingerings available across the to underpin the clarinet’s lyrical epilogue. bedrock of creative expression. This recording The slow movement’s lush sensuality, rich in clarinet’s full range; many of these find a home Embodied energy and poetic reflection coexist in reflects the eloquence of Boyle’s mature musical whole-tone melodies and chromatic inflections, in Burble. ‘Extreme leaps and rapid figurations Bagatelle No. 3, which finds its feet as a dance language, with its striking rhythmic energy evokes pleasure and desire while transcending using a variety of articulations also feature in compound time before slipping into a trance- and refreshing absence of sentimentality. The both with passing moments of profound spiritual extensively in the piece which falls into three like reverie, the latter intensified by a severe- composer’s lifelong feeling for melodic line reflection. The feisty, near-heroic writing of main sections,’ the composer comments. The sounding canon at the unison between clarinet and formal balance, the legacy of his youthful Boyle’s central section gives way to a mystical work’s title shapes the character of its contents, and piano right hand, more dark than light. studies as clarinettist and pianist, and a readiness union of the profane and the sacred as the already clear in the low note repeated using Bagatelle No. 4 compresses into its brief span to collaborate with young performers are also opening material is recalled and subtly modified. alternative fingerings at the outset and in the the expressionist turmoil of Schoenberg’s Pierrot among the hallmarks of the music recorded here. Introversion is blown away in the Sonatina’s opening sequence of mellifluous chromatic Lunaire and all the fun of a circus populated by finale by a counterpoint of contrasting phrase motifs. The soloist is instructed to sing while malevolent clowns. The Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano was lengths, metrical ambiguities and, above all, playing during Burble’s keening central section, written in the opening months of 1979 as a the sheer rhythmic energy unleashed by which stands before the return of vigorous Tatty’s Dance offers a prime example of its present to Lennox Berkeley. The clarity of the both clarinet and piano. The two instruments melodic activity and a thrilling final ascent to the creator’s deep understanding of instrumental work’s melodic ideas and the sophistication negotiate a brief passage of calm, lyrical but clarinet’s altissimo register. technique and its essential part in creating multiple of its harmonic language project a touching never entirely tranquil, before setting off on their shades of timbre. Boyle composed the work in personal compliment from student to teacher, dash to the work’s neatly etched finishing line. Four Bagatelles, like the Sonatina, dates from 2010 as a solo piano piece, written in honour of his one rooted in the sensibility of Berkeley’s music early 1979 and was revised thirty-five years later wife’s sixtieth birthday; he subsequently revised yet confident and individual in its own identity. Burble was commissioned by and written for to create a collection of showpieces for clarinet in the score as a duet for Fraser Langton and James Boyle establishes the outline of a simple sonata Fraser Langton while he was studying for a B flat and piano. The flamboyant Bagatelle No. 1 Willshire. Its main melody, like all the best tunes, form in his composition’s first movement, Master’s degree at the Royal Conservatoire springs from the mix in its initial clarinet theme sounds familiar yet unpredictable, a condition presenting a strong first subject and contrasting of Scotland. The young clarinettist gave the of close intervals and vaulting melodic leaps. aided by its modified repetition and judicious Notes on the music development. Everything flows inTatty’s Dance; work’s first movement. Much of its material evolve in an instant to create fresh patterns, day I was born, March 9th, 1951. Somehow I nothing remains the same, even when a phrase is generated from the repeating four-note their transformation accentuated by changes wanted to mark my relationship with this work or a fragment of a phrase is repeated. Bars of motif of the opening bar and subtle variations of metre, collisions of duple- and triple-time and its unjustly neglected composer, and this trio 7/16 unexpectedly divert the more conventional on subsequent patterns of rising and falling rhythms, head-spinning syncopations and is my personal homage.’ flow of 3/4 and 4/4, sufficient to blur the intervals. Strauss’s wheedling Eulenspiegel vertiginous leaps across the clarinet’s full range. boundaries of metrical articulation and give the is never far from the spirit of Rogue. Boyle The Fool comes to rest in the movement’s mid- Honegger subtitled his Fifth Symphony Di Tre dance its individuality. conveys the Rogue’s irresistible, albeit empty, section, pausing to play a disjointed, melancholy Re, a reference to the D (or ‘re’ in sol-fa notation) charm on a stream of burbling semiquavers, chorale – the clarinet directed to play into the played by timpani and basses at the end of each Langton and Willshire also became the their appeal amplified by changes of metre, fluid piano’s strings – before dashing ahead once of the work’s three movements. Throughout first players to assume the identities of the phrasing and sudden contrasts of register. The more with one last display of virtuoso clownery. his trio, Boyle alludes to and develops what he archetypes portrayed in Dramatis Personae. music’s hypnotic intensity eventually presents describes as ‘snippets of themes from all … The work, created in 2012, was written for and an opportunity for the Rogue to misbehave, with While lessons with Lennox Berkeley informed movements of Honegger’s dark and restless dedicated to them. In a short introductory note the clarinet adopting an independent tempo, the thematic economy and expressive wealth symphony’; the three Ds of the title, however, to the score, Boyle outlines the character of slower than the piano’s, before delivering six of the Sonatina, the spirit of Arthur Honegger are only stated at the work’s close, once by each each movement.