At Ravinia in the summer of 2000. Larry Combs played the Mozart Clarinet Concerto accompanied by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
It was a special event because Larry Combs used the Basset extended clarinet instead of the regular A clarinet. Mozart originally wrote the piece intended for a basset clarinet. However, the design was lost about a century after Mozart's death and people just started playing it on the A clarinet. Because the basset clarinet can go down as far as the low C it sometimes sounds awkward to a trained ear if you listen to it being played on the A.
Larry Combs had the basset clarinet made especially for him so he could perform it in its original version (well... actually the original version was lost so Larry Combs had to do some guess work to make the piece sound like what Mozart had intended it to sound).
If there weren't too many people around, I would have broken down and cried. It was sooooo good! Larry Combs had such a unique and wonderful sound. In fact, he is currently a world leading clarinetist.
I later heard an interview on the radio. Larry Combs said that he first approached the problem of trying to fix the concerto to make it make more sense about a decade earlier. What he noticed was that there were many instances where it just doesn't make any sense at all. So, he began to put the pieces of the puzzle together to recreate the piece. The result was a much better sounding concerto that did a lot more justice to Mozart.
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There was actually another concert that was just as great. That time, I actually had some tears coming out of my eyes.
Chicago Symphony Hall in 2002. Pianist Lang Lang was playing the Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony. Man was he good!!
The concerto have been accused many times by music critics as being overly sensitive. I first heard the concerto when I was driving in the badlands of Kentucky on the radio in 1999. Although I was only catch the second part of it, it was so good that I had to stop at a rest area and enjoyed the music. I quickly picked up the emotion that was written into the concerto by Rachmaninov and began to cry. The recording was actually made by pianist Van Cliburn with the Chicago Symphony conducted by the legendary Fritz Reiner. Because of such sensitivity that was going on in the piece, I decided to do a research into the piece.
Rachmaninov started out his career as a pianist in Russia at a very young age. According to his journals, although he had always yearned to be a composer, he thought that he had neither the talent nor the will to immerse himself into composing music. As a result, he spent much of his early years as a pianist performing for various parts in concerts, musicals, and ballets. At the age of twenty-five, he began composing a piece for the first time. At first Rachmaninov was reluctant to perform what he has composed, questioning how people would react to it and how it would reflect himself as a composer. As was best reflected by his comment many years later, When the coughing increases, I leave out the next variation. If there is no coughing, I play them in order ... The record so far is 18 variations. Following the urge of his friends, Rachmaninov premiered his Prelude in C-sharp Minor in 1892 in Moscow and, to his surprise, was met with great success. This success was short lived, however. His premier of his First Symphony was a great failure as the composer/conductor hardly had any applause at all. This disaster quickly put Rachmaninov in a deep depression, one that he was unable to recover from for many years. In 1897 the composer made an attempt to recover from his recent failure and premiered his First Piano Concerto. Again, he was frustrated with failure as many of the audience members began to leave in the middle of the piece. This undoubtedly put him into a deeper state of depression and he was unable to compose anything for four three years.
After four years of doing little to no performances and failing attempts at writing music, Rachmaninov wrote the Second Piano Concerto. Despite his good friend’s urge to do a performance on the piece, Rachmaninov remained hesitant to hold a concert. After many months of his friend’s insistence, Rachmaninov finally agreed to do a performance of the concerto. The concert was a great success and quickly gave Rachmaninov great fame throughout Europe.
Anyway, now you know a little more about classical music in the romantic era.
This message has been edited by Lam, 12-14-2004 10:04 PM
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