Thea King
Three English Clarinet Concertos

* Alan Rawsthorne: Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra
* Gordon Jacob: Mini-Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra
* Arnold Cooke: Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra

Thea King (clarinet), Northwest Chamber Orchestra of Seattle/Alun Francis
Hyperion CDA66031 Total time: 57:12

Summary for the Busy Executive: Elegant and fun.

Players as much as instruments inspire composers of concertos. British
composers were especially lucky in their clarinetists, oboists, horn
players, and violists. There have been at least three dominant British
clarinetists: Frederick "Jack" Thurston, Gervase de Peyer, and Thea King,
and admiration for their playing has led to the works recorded here.
Thurston, the grand old man of the group, got works from Rawsthorne as
well as Finzi's masterpiece. Thea King, Thurston's pupil and wife, got
the Jacob "mini-concerto," while Cooke wrote his concerto for de Peyer.
All three composers, however, languish in a critical limbo. About the
only recordings they get come from British labels. Unlike Vaughan Williams,
Britten, Walton, and Tippett, they haven't a firm hold on the international
music scene - a pity, because they all write wonderful stuff, usually
neoclassical in craft though neo-Romantic in spirit - and all, to some
extent, fall into the limbo of "composers' composers."

Rawsthorne's stock has probably risen the highest of the three. He
had an enviable reputation, once upon a time, as a symphonist of real
individuality, like Simpson today. His neoclassicism comes essentially
from Hindemith, and his idiom sounds a little like Walton because of it.
However, with the notable exception of one piece that I know of, Street
Corner Overture and some of Practical Cats, his music lacks the physical
ebullience of Walton's. He strips his music to the bone, and his work
usually testifies to an austere, guarded personality. Those who take
Mozart's concerto as an archetype may find Rawsthorne's example a bit
surprising. The sun seems to have forgotten to rise, despite some sprightly
rhythms. The proportions and the means are very modest, but Rawsthorne
manages to suggest great weight without actually piling on the musical
pounds. Rawsthorne subtly links its four movements, so that the end of
one "fits" the beginning of the next. A current of worry runs through
the first-movement "Preludio." The "Capriccio," a scherzo on a three-note
idea, jokes, but the laughs are grim and short of breath. The slow
movement "Aria," finely adumbrated by pizzicato bass at the scherzo's
end, is a grave conversation among the string sections and their principals.
The clarinet is, to a surprising extent, left out of things. When it
does sing, it uses its low register. The "Aria" weeps over a bleak
landscape. The finale, "Invention," bustles like a wasp guarding its
hive. It's not exactly ill-humored, but you can't really call it jolly
fun, either.

Gordon Jacob seems to have gotten stuck in the pigeonhole of "Craftsman."
That is, the music, though well-made, doesn't go very deep. I consider
this a half-truth from lazy people. The true part is that Jacob's music
is indeed well-made. As to its alleged lack of depth, I contend that
his output is too little known for generalization. Like so many of his
generation, Walton and then Britten and then Tippett eclipsed him. After
all, he did study with Vaughan Williams, who by the older man's own
admission had nothing to teach him in terms of technique, and his songs,
at any rate (if you can find them), are wonderful. I especially recommend
his three Blake settings for high voice and string trio. It could very
well be that mainly the light stuff gets recorded. The "mini-concerto"
makes no claims to profundity. The music seeks, in Debussy's happy phrase,
"humbly to please." Jacob has essentially written four miniatures in a
kind of Mendelssohnian fast-slow-allegretto-fast progression. He wrote
it in 1980 (Jacob died in 1984), but the work harkens back to the heady
days of the Twenties. The neoclassicism, as is immediately evident, has
more in common with home-grown models than with anything on the continent:
Vaughan Williams's Concerto accademico and Holst's Fugal Concerto, for
example. In the liner notes to the recording, Jacob likens his work to
"a miniature symphony or sinfonietta," mainly because the movements show
the bare bones of symphonic classical forms. However, I think this misses
the point. Unlike Rawsthorne's slightly-longer work, Jacob's mini-concerto
doesn't move like a symphony.  Each of its four movements really just
states a group of ideas - exposition without development. I don't put
Jacob down for this. The ideas are wonderful. It's as if he has found
for any point the right note. He has made little jewels of melody and
elegant settings to surround them. The lovely slow movement - at
three-and-a-half minutes the biggest of the four - manages to say a lot
with very little. The first and third movement will charm you out of
your drawers. The tarantella finale gets the body moving.  Jacob expressed
his amazement that King took it much faster than he dared to specify.
King certainly sails through with apparent ease. However, Charles Russo
on Premier PRCD1052 beats her by about fifteen seconds. Nevertheless,
overall King gives a more elegant, more poetic account. She finds depth
in the music that Russo misses. King's performance is the one to have.

Arnold Cooke actually studied with Hindemith. Everything I've heard has
been beautiful, in the way of a Brancusi sculpture. While one can find
superficial resemblances of idiom, in particular a fondness for fourths,
and a seriousness of attitude, the music doesn't really come across as
derivative - that is, without a reason of its own for being. Rather, it
compels on its own. I actually prefer it to Hindemith's clarinet concerto.
Cooke tends to sing more and to dance less than Hindemith. The counterpoint
intensifies rapt singing, rather than exciting rhythm. For some reason,
however, it's harder to find work by him than even by Rawsthorne or
Jacob.  He has written the most ambitious concerto of the three - at
slightly under a half-hour, the longest by far. Like the Nielsen, it's
genuinely symphonic and has a great deal of matter. It divides into three
movements - Allegro, Lento, Allegro vivace. Despite the modesty of its
forces, the concerto gives its soloist an heroic part of great substance.
It's not a young hero who slays dragons, as in, say, the Strauss first
horn concerto, but a hero moving through a darker, uneasier, more adult
world. The strings shoulder as much of the argument as does the soloist,
particularly in the first movement, but the contrast of timbre ensures
that we never really forget that the clarinetist is first among equals.
The slow movement sings mainly of serious matters, but one also hears
the call of the blackbird, which the composer heard in his garden and
noted down. Curiously enough, the blackbird's call has ties to the main
subject of the movement. The finale is the most Hindemithian part of the
concerto, but what the hey? I certainly won't sniff at more good Hindemith,
particularly something as playful as this movement. I particularly like
some surprising and vigorous ear-stretching modulations. As I say, this
concerto, by its span alone, makes greater demands than the other two
on the musicianship of the soloist.  King, Francis, and the Seattle
players do a handsome job.

The sound, as you would expect from Hyperion, is smooth and creamy.

Steve Schwartz