Various Composers - French Clarinet Music [Soames/Higgins]Here's a lovely set of short French clarinet pieces, each one is over 5 minutes, but yet under 10 minutes, eleven pieces with a total time of 79 minutes, what makes this extra special is that there's quite a number of 'unknown' pieces, and yet they're superb, the shortness of the pieces actually adds to their listenability, they never outstay their welcome, weave a nice bit of magic and then they're gone!.
Victoria Soames is the creator of 'Clarinet Classics', an innovative Record Label dedicated to the clarinet, what a clever idea!.
The idea for this disc was to bring together the best music of an annual French clarinet competition, which would commission pieces from French Composers, which would prove the dexterity of those Clarinetists in the competition, each piece was designed to be hard, either in its fast complexity, or in its more tranquil expression, but usually both, in many ways the music composed has become more enduring than the winners it has created.
I very much enjoyed tracks 1, 5 & 11, especially Messager's 'Solo De Concours', it's the most ideal piece for the competition, by turns it's complex and difficult, then it's lyrical and sweet, but no less difficult to interpret and bring forth its beauty, the start is a tremendous tune, but also a challenge for the Clarinetist [0:00-1:27], full of showing what the clarinet is made of, by opposite contrast, the piece turns to a reflective mood [1:27-3:08], into a beautiful lyrical melody of refinement, even within this section there's a middle section, where the piano plays the main tune, and the clarinet adds melismas [2:14-2:38], slowly getting louder, probably the very best part of the whole piece, a very varied piece, that goes into all four corners of what can be done, and all welded together to create perfection, one of the loveliest short pieces for clarinet.
Here's Jose Franch-Ballester playing Messager's 'Solo De Concours' on YouTube.
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