Clarinet Sonatas Michael Collins | Michael Mchale Clarinet Piano Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library Photo Music & Arts Lebrecht
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REGER CLARINET SONATAS Michael Collins | Michael McHale clarinet piano Max Reger, with his wife, Elsa withhiswife, Max Reger, © T.P. / Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library Max Reger (1873 – 1916) Sonata, Op. 107 (1908 – 09)* 30:46 in B flat major • in B-Dur • en si bémol majeur for Clarinet (or Viola) and Piano Seiner Königlichen Hoheit dem Großherzog Ernst Ludwig von Hessen und bei Rhein ehrfurchtsvoll gewidmet 1 Moderato – Molto tranquillo – Sostenuto – Tempo I – Molto tranquillo – (Tempo I) – Molto tranquillo – (Tempo I) – Sostenuto – Quasi adagio 12:27 2 Vivace – Andante – Adagio – Vivace – Quasi adagio 5:14 3 Adagio 5:46 4 Allegretto con grazia, vivace – Adagio – Più adagio 7:08 Sonata, Op. 49 No. 1 (1900)* 20:16 in A flat major • in As-Dur • en la bémol majeur for Clarinet and Piano 5 Allegro affanato – Più tranquillo 7:43 6 Vivace, ma non troppo – Sostenuto – Tempo I. Vivace 4:01 7 Larghetto, ma non troppo, un poco con moto – Un poco più andante – Più mosso assai – Tempo I. Larghetto 4:05 8 Prestissimo assai 4:17 3 Sonata, Op. 49 No. 2 (1900)† 20:19 in F sharp minor • in fis-Moll • en fa dièse mineur for Clarinet and Piano Herrn Karl Wagner zugeeignet 9 Allegro dolente 7:51 10 Vivacissimo – Sostenuto – Vivacissimo 2:41 11 Larghetto, un poco con moto – Più andante – Più mosso – Tempo I. Larghetto 4:19 12 Allegro affabile, con moto 5:16 TT 71:49 Michael Collins clarinets in B flat* / A† Michael McHale piano 4 © Spring Festival in Tokyo / Tomoko Hidaki Michael McHale and Michael Collins at the Spring Festival in Tokyo, 2017 inTokyo, Michael McHaleandCollinsattheSpringFestival Reger: Clarinet Sonatas Sonatas in A flat major and F sharp minor, a mental and physical breakdown following Op. 49: compositional history compulsory military service and a period of Listeners for whom the name of Max Reger teaching at the Wiesbaden Conservatory, (1873 – 1916) immediately invokes a particular where he had enrolled as a student of Hugo kind of organ music – baroque-inspired, Riemann in 1890. bombastic, contorted, lengthy, and above all The autograph manuscript of the Sonata in loud – are likely to be taken aback by the three A flat major, Op. 49 No. 1 is signed and dated essentially lyrical and tender works recorded by Reger 12 May 1900. Although he may have here. Chamber music, in fact, was among his been musing upon it for upwards of a month most favoured genres, and Reger considered or so, its actual composition seems to have himself one of a select number of leading been very quick: a letter to the composer Ella spirits through whom its compositional future Kerndl (1863 – 1940), dated 2 May, excitedly would be secured. The three clarinet sonatas announced his firm plan to write two sonatas are among fourteen such duo works in his for clarinet and piano, along with several published output, composed between 1890 other works – ‘I have such great plans!’ – and 1915: effectively his entire compositional while a further letter, of 9 May, set out the career. key of this and its companion piece, in Comparison with Brahms in this respect F sharp minor. Writing to Georg Göhler is inevitable; and it was in fact his walking in (1874 – 1954) on 17 May, he reported the on a private performance by Adalbert Lindner completion of the first sonata and claimed and the clarinettist Johann Kürmeyer of that the second was also basically complete Brahms’s Sonata in F minor, Op. 120 No. 1 in in his head. The manuscript of Op. 49 No. 2 the first months of 1900 that caused Reger to is undated, but a further letter to Kerndl, on declare on the spot that he would compose 27 June, informed her that both sonatas two such pieces. This was in Weiden, whither were now finished. he had returned from Wiesbaden in 1898 to Despite appearing under the same opus recuperate with his parents; he had suffered number, the two sonatas were not published 6 simultaneously. Op. 49 No. 1 was issued by Sonata in B flat major, Op. 107: compositional Joseph Aibl Verlag in June 1901, while No. 2 history languished for some reason until late 1903 Reger’s passion for chamber music is before appearing in print. One consequence particularly reflected in the dedication of of this was that Reger took the opportunity the Sonata in B flat, Op. 107 to Ernst Ludwig to add a dedication to Karl Wagner, the (1868 – 1937), the last Grand Duke of Hessen- clarinettist who with Reger himself had given Darmstadt. A great patron of the arts and the first public performance of Op. 49 No. 1, in music, he had established the Darmstadt Munich, on 18 April 1902 (a previous private Chamber Music Festival in 1908; Reger’s run-through had been given by Lindner and Op. 107 sonata received its first performance Kürmeyer, who had been so inspirational in the on 9 June the following year, at the second work’s genesis). festival, when it was received with great That Op. 49 No. 1 appeared without a triumph in the presence of Ernst Ludwig, who dedication has less happy causes. Already in ascended the podium to congratulate Reger March and April 1900 Reger had given a firm warmly. Reger, in return, described the Grand undertaking to the Hamburg composer and Duke as the ‘stimulus’ to his composition. critic Emil Krause (1840 – 1916) to dedicate to The sonata Op. 107 was composed him a piece of chamber music in return for some between late December 1908 and early April supportive notices (including a biographical 1909; the manuscript is dated 15 April. Work sketch published in the Neue Zeitschrift für was interrupted by concert tours early in Musik) that Krause had published. The promise 1909, but Reger declared it finished in a letter was still good by mid-May, by which time of 15 February to Fritz Stein (1879 – 1961), Op. 49 No. 1 was of course complete. But in June describing the finale as ‘a “Bear” session with 1900 Reger was offended by Krause’s negative lots of beer and Allasch!’, evidently a play on criticism of his Three Choruses, Op. 39; the the name of Stein’s local, the ‘Schwarzer Bär’, bad feeling eventually led to a complete break in Jena, and its Kümmel liqueur. Reger sent between the two men. Indeed, Reger’s wife, the finished score to the publishers Bote & Elsa, requested of the publishers Lauterbach & Bock on 6 April 1909, pointing out that it was Kuhn in May 1904 that they send no more review originally conceived for clarinet or viola and copies of Reger’s works to Krause, as he merely piano, but that performance on the violin used them as ‘wrapping paper’. was also possible: he himself undertook to 7 prepare viola and violin parts, which would assai in the case of the finale of Op. 49 No. 1, require different bowings and also the octave Vivacissimo in the second movement of Op. 49 transposition of a very small number of notes. No. 2 – the outer movements of the consistent four-movement scheme (scherzo in second The Sonatas: musical considerations place, having a slow contrasting ‘trio’ section, Despite his rumbustious characterisation then the slow movement proper) all end slowly of the Op. 107 finale, Reger had an intimate and very quietly (ppp in the case of Op. 49, understanding of the special demands of dropping to pppp in the first movement of the clarinet-piano duo, which is reflected in Op. 107), the clarinet playing in its lowest his remark to Henri Hinrichsen (28 December register. 1908) that the sonata was The first movement of Op. 49 No. 1, with a really light, genial work, not at all long its unusual marking, Allegro affan[n]ato, so that the tone-character of the wind connoting breathlessness, or agitation, can instrument doesn’t tire. stand for others in its characteristic rhythmic Likewise, writing to Adolf Wach (30 December and metrical flexibility (the movement begins 1908), he described it as on the second beat of the bar, for example, an uncommonly plain work; one mustn’t though one could not possibly intuit this), expect too much of the ‘technical’ from a labile thematic construction which eschews wind player, because that way the danger standard four- and eight-bar groupings all too easily arises of chamber music style (although the clarinet’s first statement is going out of the window and a ‘concertino’ in fact contained within eight bars, these setting in in its place; that last would be too cannot be parsed in anything resembling a fatal! Brahms has established some textbook conventional quadratic structure), along with examples of how the style should be. Reger’s famously roving harmony, all of which Although Reger was writing specifically gives this music the character of what Wagner of Op. 107 here (and it should be noted that it and Schoenberg termed ‘musical prose’ (and is in fact considerably longer than either of not for nothing did Schoenberg count Reger the Op. 49 works), much of what he claims as one of his forerunners in the cultivation of is equally applicable to all three sonatas: ‘developing variation’). technical display for its own sake is not at Beyond this prose-like character, a stake. Despite some fast tempi – Prestissimo distinct narrative quality is conferred on 8 Op. 107 as a whole through the use, at Fields, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco significant moments in the first, third, and Symphony, NHK Symphony Orchestra, and final movements (note especially the endings Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, both as a of the outer movements), of a descending soloist and conductor.