Gorgeous work, highly recommended.
5
By JOHN WILLIAMS CLARINET CONCERTO
There isn't much of Williams' Hollywood style in this concerto, which is basically a neo-Classical work that flirts with atonality and uses a fully chromatic harmonic and melodic palette that builds on the same forms used by Bartók, Walton, and others. The work is in a fast-slow-fast three-movement layout; however, Williams' film music skills—or perhaps his native skills that make him an outstanding film composer, are visible in at least two aspects. No matter how chromatic or abstract they may become, the melodic lines command the attention of the listener and stay in the memory so that they guide the listener through the work, and the orchestration is clear and colorful. The opening movement is initially marked Moderato. It starts with solo violin, then woodwinds slowly appearing and entwining about the soloists' lines. Woodwinds do play an important part in the concerto. The 1988 revision of the score also adds an E flat pedal bass. The melodic opening theme contrasts with a cocky second subject and the main body of the movement is marked Allegro. After the dramatic high point of the movement, the violin gets a brilliant cadenza and the concerto quietly ends. The central Adagio is the emotional heart of the work. It is here, if anyplace, that Williams expresses the feelings occupying him at that time. For while just before he gained his great fame, he lost his wife, actress and singer Barbara Ruick Williams, who unexpectedly died in Reno of a cerebral hemorrhage during a film shoot. (Her best-known screen performance is probably that of Carrie Pipperidge in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel.) This concerto as a whole is dedicated to her memory and the elegiac tone of this movement and its emotional arc leads one to think of these circumstances. The Adagio begins calmly with a lyrical theme, but the music explodes into frantic action, only later in the movement finding peace again. The Finale starts with an introduction that seems a battle between a Maestoso statement of six chords, but followed by a few bars of Presto tempo, then some more Maestoso. The movement then settles into the fast tempo, with the six introductory chords always seeming to try to repeat themselves, but always frustrated by the violin's interest in being fast and brilliant. Gorgeous work, highly recommended.
I'm the producer of his Clarinet Concerto written for Principal Clarinetist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic - Michele Zukovsky.
