C O P L S T R AUSS N Clarinet Concerto D Duet Concertino Appalachian Spring Capriccio Ernst Ottensamer clarinet | Stepan Turnovsky bassoon Academy of London Royal Northern Sinfonia Richard Stamp conductor STRAUSS | COPLAND Duet Concertino for clarinet and bassoon* Richard Strauss 1 I. Allegro moderato [6.36] 2 II. Andante [3.26] RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949) 3 III. Allegro ma non troppo [9.27] Duet Concertino for clarinet and bassoon I. Allegro moderato 4 Prelude to Capriccio* Richard Strauss (1864-1949) [11.13] II. Andante Peter Manning, Pauline Lowbury violins | Peter Lale, Deborah Lander violas III. Allegro ma non troppo Martin Loveday, Robert Bailey cellos | Richard Stamp director Prelude to Capriccio Clarinet Concerto † Aaron Copland (1900-1990) 5 I. Slowly and expressively [9.27] 6 II. Rather fast [8.32] Appalachian Spring Suite (Original Version) † Aaron Copland AARON COPLAND (1900-1990) 7 I. Very slowly [3.12] Clarinet Concerto 8 II. Fast [2.57] I. Slowly and expressively II. Rather fast 9 III. Moderate [4.02] 0 IV. Quite Fast [3.43] Appalachian Spring Suite (Original version) q V. Still Faster [4.03] w VI. Very Slowly (As at First) [1.19] e VII. Calm and Flowing [3.17] r VIII. Moderate. Coda. [3.51] Total timings: [75.14] Ernst Ottensamer clarinet | Stepan Turnovsky bassoon Academy of London* | Royal Northern Sinfonia † Richard Stamp conductor www.signumrecords.com for WSK he four works on this disc, relative values of words and music. Their Self-deprecating to the last, Strauss Strauss, maintained that the Concertino was all composed in the 1940s, rival claims are embodied in the figures called his late wind concertos – the Second based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale embrace the lingering end of the composer Flamand and the poet Horn Concerto, the Oboe Concerto and the The Princess and the Swineherd. Typically, of one musical tradition Olivier. Both are in love with the Countess Duet Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon though, Strauss refused to give anything away and the vigorous upsurge Madeleine, last and most radiant in a long – ‘shavings from an old man’s workshop; when asked about a possible programme. Tof another. The works of Richard Strauss’s line of Strauss soprano heroines. The curtain unassuming and written primarily with a Like its companion concertos, the Duet Indian Summer – mellifluous, retrospective, rises during a string sextet that Flamand desire to entertain’. Entertain they certainly Concertino stands or falls as ‘pure’ music. playful – were an old man’s refuge from the has just finished composing. Aptly for a do. Like Capriccio, all three concertos In another nod to the eighteenth century, barbarism of war and its aftermath. What piece ostensibly written in 1777, the sextet retreat to the safety of the past, refracting Strauss scored the Concertino for string the public thought of them was incidental, unfolds in traditional sonata form. Aptly, the spirit of Mozart through Strauss’s own orchestra plus harp (used abstemiously), even irrelevant. In the same decade, Aaron too, the mood is one of musing serenity, lush, post-Wagnerian harmonic idiom. with the strings divided into ‘soli’ and ‘tutti’, Copland and other younger American briefly ruffled in the central development by Strauss began serious work on the Duet like a Baroque concerto grosso. Its three composers were reaching out, via radio, passionate outbursts for first violin and first Concertino in Switzerland in late 1946, movements run into each other without a recordings and film, to a new mass audience. viola: an early indication that the opera’s completing it in Montreux in December 1947. break. The leisurely first movement opens European influence, though inescapable, squalls will be intense but short-lived. Like Elgar, he always valued the friendship with a brief prelude for string sextet whose was minimised in a populist, vernacular idiom Approaching eighty, Strauss regarded of professional colleagues; and the initial mood and floating textures recall the that absorbed native folk music and jazz. Capriccio as his swansong. With a typical impetus for the work was his old friend Hugo Capriccio sextet. The violin’s initial curling wry shrug, he wrote in 1943 that ‘Whatever Burghauser, principal bassoonist of the motif, echoed by the lower instruments, turns ‘A dainty morsel for cultural gourmets’ notes I scribble now are wrist exercises for my Vienna Philharmonic before he was forced out to be the germinal seed of the whole was Strauss’s verdict on his final opera, estate (= royalties) that have no bearing on into exile by the Nazis. When he dedicated work. Whether or not it represents a dancing composed during 1941 and premiered in musical history…Their only function is to pass the Duet Concertino to Burghauser, Strauss or dreaming princess, the clarinet dominates Munich in 1942. Strauss had long desired to the hours with minimal boredom, since one told him, half-jokingly, that behind the work the narrative. Serenity is threatened by the compose ‘a second Rosenkavalier, without cannot play skat all day.’ Strauss’s self-styled lay a fairy story. ‘A dancing princess [clarinet] entry of the bassoon, rising gruffly from the longueurs’. The upshot was Capriccio, his ‘wrist exercises’ would include three wind is alarmed by the grotesque cavorting the depths and continuing with an angular, supreme act of rococo-romantic escapism at concertos and the elegiac Metamorphosen, of a bear [bassoon] in imitation of her. At syncopated theme, like a hobbled waltz. a time when Hitler’s forces were launching his lament for the physical and cultural last she is won over to the creature and Gradually the bassoon grows more lyrically their invasion of the Soviet Union. devastation of Germany. Finally, the Vier dances with it, upon which it turns into a eloquent, its relationship with the clarinet Luminous, nostalgic, urbanely witty, Letzte Lieder are at once a consummation prince. So in the end, you too will turn into more harmonious – and more frisky. Capriccio is in essence an opera about of Strauss’s abiding love affair with the a prince and live happily ever after….’ A richly scored version of the clarinet’s opera, centring on the debate (especially soprano voice and a profound, unsentimental We can take this appealing story with main theme, with the harp making its belated topical in Paris in 1777, the year of valediction. Here is the whole German at least half a pinch of salt. The conductor debut, leads into the short central the work’s setting) between the Romantic tradition in its glorious death agony. Clemens Krauss, who often worked with Andante. Here the bassoon morphs 4 5 into a soulful poet, singing its heart out A landmark in his self-styled quest to ‘find playing, was evidently delighted to accept this hugely entertaining movement, ‘in free against softly shimmering tremolos on solo a way to a distinctively American music’ the commission. ‘I thought that writing a rondo form’, as ‘an unconscious fusion violins and harp. In a new spirit of concord the was his 1938 cowboy ballet Billy the Kid. concerto with him in mind would give me a of elements obviously related to North soloists take over each other’s themes before Mingling patriotism and social concerns, fresh point of view.’ The outcome was one and South American popular music’. After alighting on the prelude’s curling motif. The Copland now aimed to communicate with of his most immediately appealing works, the clarinet’s cheeky main theme, played rondo finale then bounds in with the same the widest possible audience, drawing in two movements linked by a clarinet stacatissimo against vamping lower strings, motif, played alternately upside down and freely on American popular and folk music cadenza. Its orchestration is both economical comes a syncopated, jazzy tune, a brief the right way up. With the odd furtive glance without compromising his own individuality. and colourful. As Copland put it, ‘The section in Charleston rhythm, and an episode at Rosenkavalier, this ebullient, capricious In this he succeeded, despite mutterings instrumentation being clarinet with strings, based on a Brazilian theme that Copland music is Strauss’s last homage to Mozart, not in some quarters that he had ‘sold out’. harp, and [in the finale] piano, I did not have had heard in Rio de Janeiro. Marked ‘with least the finale of the Clarinet Concerto. Fellow-composer Elliott Carter wrote of a large battery of percussion to achieve humour, relaxed’, this tune slinks in almost Confirming the Concertino’s tight unity, Billy the Kid and its successors, Rodeo and jazzy effects, so I used slapping basses and casually, with clarinet underpinned by Strauss recalls and transforms earlier themes, Appalachian Spring, that ‘there is a keen whacking harp sounds to simulate them. The the ‘slapping basses’. The whooping final including the bassoon’s gawky waltz from the awareness in the choice of folk-material Clarinet Concerto ends with a fairly elaborate glissando, or ‘smear’, is a blatant homage to first movement. Throughout the finale clarinet and in their handling that transforms coda in C major that finishes off with a Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. and bassoon operate in close, mischievous everything into the Coplandesque’. clarinet glissando – or “smear” in jazz lingo.’ The three all-American ballets that collusion, often locked together in octaves. With ‘folk’ replaced by ‘jazz’ and ‘South The first movement exploits the clarinet’s Copland composed between 1938 and 1944 In the long-spanned second theme the American’, Carter’s words also fit theClarinet soaring lyricism in music that combines quickly entered the nation’s mythology. soloists, tutti strings and harp play in 2/4 Concerto that Copland wrote at the request an aching, almost Mahlerian romanticism Most iconic of all was the last of the time against the scampering 6/8 rhythms of of the bandleader Benny Goodman in (Copland especially admired Das Lied von three, Appalachian Spring, an idealised the solo strings: shades, again, of Strauss’s 1948.