DEDICATIONS – WORKS FOR CLARINET & ORCHESTRA

GERALD FINZI - WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART - MAX BRUCH

ROELAND HENDRIKX & THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
SANDER GEERTS - MARTYN BRABBINS
I dedicate this recording to the genius and generosity of Dame Thea King (1925-2007), the
doyenne of the clarinet, to whom I am indebted in so many ways.
When I left the conservatory in 1994, I lacked direction and had no idea what to become.
It was Thea King who encouraged me to persevere as a clarinettist, and who generously
gave me a number of invaluable master classes in her London cottage. These tutorials were
marvels of insight and intensity: they would go on for hours, and were invariably terminated
by Thea’s gentle announcement that she “had to practice”.
A more concrete emanation of Thea King’s legacy to me is the Clarinet Concerto by Gerald
Finzi, composed in 1948 for Thea’s teacher and husband Frederick “Jack” Thurston. Thea
passionately championed this work, and she must have sensed my love for it: one day I got
a package in the mail containing the letters Finzi had written to Thurston between 1948 and
1953. They offer a first-hand account of the genesis of the concerto, featuring many pleasant
exchanges (such as Finzi’s enquiry whether a certain note would not be too high for the
clarinet and Thurston’s reassurance that the orchestra is so busy at that very spot that is in
any case inaudible).
Through Thea, and through Jack, I am a privileged performer of the Finzi concerto. I can
think of no better tribute to Dame Thea (and to Thurston, Finzi, and Britain) than acquainting
a larger audience with this extraordinary music.
© David Crookes
MOZART, BRUCH, FINZI:
CLARINET(TIST) CONCERTOS
More than any other instrument, the clarinet
appears to be a medium for personal
dedication. Alternatively, and somewhat less
graciously: composers needed a good reason
to write for it. As a consequence, most of the
famous clarinet works are inextricably linked
to the virtuosi for whom they were designed,
and sometimes master clarinettists even
changed the course of musical careers. A case
in point is Johannes Brahms, who had decided
to stop composing in 1890, but reconsidered
his retirement plans when he heard clarinettist
Richard Mühlfeld of the Meiningen orchestra
play. Brahms was so overwhelmed that
he immediately wrote a clarinet trio and
quintet for Mühlfeld, and dedicated his last
instrumental compositions, the two Clarinet
Sonatas op. 120, to him. Brahms, however,
never wrote a clarinet concerto.
Exactly a century before, Mozart too had
been so awe-struck by a clarinettist that
he consecrated a number of timeless
masterpieces to him, including a clarinet
quintet, and his last instrumental
composition, the Clarinet Concerto in A.
Playing this concerto therefore automatically
entails paying homage to Anton Stadler
(1753-1812), the foremost clarinet virtuoso
of Mozart’s days. The first documented
connection between Stadler and Mozart
immediately reveals Stadler’s popstar appeal:
“Have my thanks, brave virtuoso! What you
do with your instrument I have never heard.
Never would I have thought that a clarinet
would be able to imitate the human voice as
remarkably as you imitate it. Your instrument
has so soft and lovely a tone that nobody who
has a heart can resist it, and I have one, dear
Virtuoso; let me thank you!” (J. F. von Schink,
Literarische Fragmente, 1785)
The Clarinet Concerto K. 622 was the last
piece of instrumental music to be finished
by Mozart, though this fact should not be
overdramatized: unlike Brahms, Mozart was
not planning on retiring, let alone that he had
anticipated his demise. Milos Forman’s epic
movie Amadeus has instilled in us the idea
that Mozart’s death was a foreseeable event
which necessitated the speedy completion
of a number of works. In actual fact, the
cited occasions for the Clarinet Concerto
were disappointingly mundane. It has been
suggested that Stadler commissioned the
concerto – but “forgot” to pay Mozart for it –,
but also that Mozart had heard of Franz Xaver its intonation and homogeneity is concerned.
Süssmayr’s intention to write a concerto for
Stadler, and refused to be outdone by a pupil
he bore no great respect for.
In its earliest guise, the later Clarinet
Concerto was not even conceived for the
clarinet: its first 199 bars are almost identical
to an abandoned concerto which Mozart
had incepted in 1787 for Stadler’s other pet
instrument, the basset horn (a larger and
lower member of the clarinet family). Neither
was the finished concerto as we know it
intended for the standard A-clarinet, but for
an instrument with a slightly extended lower
range, probably the basset clarinet which was opportunity to play a truly beautiful Mozart
invented at the time and also championed
by Stadler. In the absence of an autograph,
modern performers rely on the first edition
(by André in 1801) which was transposed for
A-clarinet.
For this recording, clarinet solo Roeland
Hendrikx was faced with the difficult
choice between the basset clarinet and the
A-clarinet: “the standard A-clarinet has
continued to develop for over 200 years. As
a result, it approximates perfection as far as
I use the “Recital” A-clarinet by the French
woodwind builder Henri Selmer, a somewhat
heavier instrument developed in the 1980s,
which has never become very popular on
account of its weight. Still, I prefer it as I get
so much comfort and beauty from it. The
modern basset clarinet, by contrast, has
stopped developing for more than a century:
because there is almost no repertoire for it,
instrument builders have invested little effort
in correcting its awkward notes. Although
I possess a basset clarinet, I asked myself
the question: does the availability of the
four extra semitones really outweigh the
Adagio? I hate to swap three or four “correct”
notes for 30 + uncomfortably nasal ones
in the mid register. I have a great respect
for historical correctness, but I believe that
Mozart would have been delighted with my
A-clarinet. In his days, the clarinet sounded
closer to the etymological origin of its name
– the “clarino”, a type of trumpet – and it had
to be loud and shrill. It now has become a
“cantabile” instrument to sing on, and that
is how I approach it. Note that this ability to
sing beautifully on the clarinet is exactly what
Stadler’s contemporaries appreciated in his
playing.”
Beauty, nobility and cheerfulness are the
key characteristics of Mozart’s Clarinet
Concerto, but they are not its only features.
The concerto’s opening Allegro immediately
establishes its gentle but also melancholy
nature. Mozart’s well-known grace and
charm are in obvious evidence, but they are
constrained by recurrent bouts of discomfort,
and the occasional but unmistakable
suggestion of much more autumnal emotions
only superficially veiled by cheerfulness.
The concluding Rondo is conspicuously less
ambiguous than the previous movements, but food anthologies, the Concerto’s inception
it maintains the concerto’s essential balance
between high spirits and emotional restraint.
The central Adagio is what Milan Kundera
would call “unbearably light”: it opens up
a realm of unparalleled sweetness, though
overtones of nostalgia make it easy for
us to imagine the dark end of the scale of
which Mozart predominantly paints the
positive pole. This wistfulness is more than a
virtual thing: the movement’s fragility is too
excruciating at some times to consume at
face value.
Is it for this agonizing fragility or just the
sheer beauty of its melody that the Adagio
is so often included on compilations called
“Romantic classics”? The ambiguity of the
concept “Romantic” is reflected in the Oxford
Dictionary’s distinction between the modern
definitions “ready demonstration of love”
and “an idealized view of reality”, and the
historical denotation “the artistic and literary
movement of Romanticism”. While the
modern definitions account for the Adagio’s
understandable popularity on classical fast
date (1791) is too early to fit the cultural-
historical delimitation of Romanticism:
Mozart is generally periodized as “Viennese
classicism”.
Around 1800, however, there was a strong
awareness that the times they were
a-changing. While the term “Romantic”
still referred negatively to the “wild” and
“fanciful” in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary
of the English Language (1775), it was
increasingly used positively around
1800, to upgrade music which conveyed
pure emotion. As early as 1810, E.T.A.
Hoffmann defined the principles of musical
Romanticism in an essay in which he
defended Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart as
“masters of instrumental compositions (…)
who breathe an identical romantic spirit”.
According to Hoffmann, Mozart’s music
“leads us into the depths of the spiritual
world”, with elements of fear, love, and
sorrow, “a foreboding of the infinite ... in the
eternal dance of the spheres”.
Hoffmann does not refer to Mozart’s Clarinet
Concerto, but there are other contemporary
testimonials in which its unusual
emotionality is acknowledged. In the earliest the judgment of the Allgemeine Musikzeitung
extant review in the Allgemeine Musikalische
Zeitung of March 1802, an anonymous
reviewer is in raptures after reading the
published score. The recommendation that
the opening Allegro is “splendidly crafted
and contains almost all of those phrases and
coloraturas with which the skilful clarinettist
can shine outstandingly” is unsurprising in
a review of this kind. The assertion that “the
emotional man will find in the Adagio all
he needs to communicate and awaken the
deepest feeling (“innigste Rührung”)” is a
sign of a markedly changing time. Mozart
may not be a quintessential Romantic by
any musicological standard, but it is evident
that his music was helping to reset the
balance between head and heart, and that
contemporary observers were acutely aware
of this recalibration (and Mozart’s role in it).
If contemporary evaluation is a safer criterion,
therefore, to pinpoint the emergence and
death of musical eras, the reception of Max
Bruch’s Double Concerto in E minor for
Clarinet and Viola shows that Romanticism
was on its last legs in 1912. That is, if we go by
(No. 50, 1913), which deemed the work
“harmless, weak, unexciting, first and
foremost too restrained”, because “its effect
is unoriginal and it shows no masterstrokes”.
This harsh rejection comes from the clash
between the concerto’s nostalgic beauty
and the changing taste of an audience which
had grown accustomed to more audacious
harmonies and modernist experiments.
Only two years later, Stravinsky’s Sacre du
Printemps would detonate Parisian concert
life, and draw the final curtain over the
Romantic era. It is strange that a composer
whose long life spanned most of this era
– Bruch was born when Mendelssohn had
yet to write his oratorio Elijah, and he died
a decade after Mahler’s radical symphonic
revolution – was so conservatively loyal to the started his career as a professional performer,
aesthetics of the mid-19th century: Bruch’s
style changed little between his seminal
Violin Concerto No. 1 (1866) and his late
work. Bruch, moreover, lived in the shadow
of, and was completely dwarfed by Brahms,
at least in his own mind: he unreservedly
but sometimes also undeservedly credited
Brahms for an independence of thought and
an inclination to take harmonic risks without
ever having to worry about public or critical
reaction. Bruch himself worried all the time.
In an interview of 1911, he correctly predicted
that Brahms’s fame would continue to grow
while his would dwindle: “Fifty years from
now Brahms will have survived as one of the
supreme composers of all time, while I will
be remembered for having written the first
violin concerto”. This pessimism was partly
unwarranted, as both the first Violin Concerto
and the intensely moving Kol Nidrei for cello
and orchestra live on as public and critical
favourites.
Bruch took to the clarinet late in life, and
like Mozart and Brahms, he was inspired by
a gifted virtuoso. His son Max Felix had just
and his clarinet playing was often compared
to that of Brahms’ choice prodigy, Richard
Mühlfeld. While the Double Concerto’s
unusual tenderness plausibly indexes Bruch’s
love for his progeny, the music also oozes
nostalgia for a bygone age.
Bruch constrains the concerto’s drama
to a very small dynamic bandwidth, and
he carefully avoids broad gestures and
contrasts: the music builds on the similarities
between the two solo instruments, whose
ranges and colour idiom are virtually
identical. In the opening Andante con moto,
the viola launches the discourse with a short
rhapsodic melody which is subsequently
reiterated by the clarinet, before the two
instruments intertwine. But then the clarinet
takes up the movement’s principal theme, a
delightful autumnal melody of unadulterated
in-our-face nostalgia. The soloists trade
phrases of this theme and conclude the
movement in tiny duets; the underlying
sonata form is steeped in harmonic and
metrical gestures which are so broad that
the music sounds much more melancholic
than it reads. In spite of its Allegro moderato-
marking, the second movement sounds no
less nostalgic than the first, if only because
of Bruch’s reliance on longer-held notes.
The writing is opulently lyrical, and the
accompaniment so unanimated and invariant
at times that it seems written for film. The
concluding Allegro molto is more vigorous
on account of its Wagnerian brass fanfares
and swinging string figures, which are
alternatively taken up by the soloists.
For Hendrikx, the Double Concerto has
always been a favourite: “I love to serve
repertoire which is not widely known: every
music lover is familiar with Bruch’s first Violin
Concerto, but the Double Concerto has
virtually been forgotten, although it has often
been claimed to outshine the Violin Concerto.
Bruch is known to have been irritated by
people who came to him for the Violin
Concerto because “he had written so many
good, if not superior things afterwards”.
Like the Mozart concerto, I love this piece
for its cantabile qualities and its fling with
kitsch: I can almost sing this autumnal gem
on my instrument. The Bruch concerto is not
a piece which requires deep understanding:
it just takes unrestrained emotion and
unpremeditated intuition. Conductor Martyn
Brabbins and I did not engage in any long
pre-recording conferences: Martyn simply
recommended to “dive in, and see what
comes out”.”
It is easy for a clarinet player to feel
“included” in the concertos he plays. After
all, most of them were intended for, if not
informed by his virtuoso colleagues (as a
result of which they could just as well be
dubbed “clarinettist concertos”). But in some
cases the link between a performer and a
piece is even stronger than that.
The Clarinet Concerto by Gerald Finzi
(1901-1956) was commissioned by the
Three Choirs Festival, and premiered on
September 9th of the festival’s 1949-edition
at Hereford cathedral. Finzi conducted the
London Symphony Orchestra and the soloist
was Frederick Thurston, Britain’s leading
clarinettist of the wartime years. A professor
at the Royal College of Music, Thurston was
also the principal clarinettist of the BBC
Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia
Orchestra. In 1953, he married his student
Thea King, but succumbed to lung cancer
later that year.
Thea King inherited her husband’s
professorship at the Royal College of
Music, and her reputation as a virtuoso and
teacher would eventually surpass his. She
passionately championed English music, and
her love for the Finzi concerto her husband
had premiered in 1949 was so virulent that it
infected her own student Roeland Hendrikx,
who himself became a passionate supporter
of the concerto.
Hendrikx feels he has “privileged front row
access to the Finzi concerto. Thea must have
witnessed the creation process, and may have
attended the work’s premiere. She convinced
me of the beauty of the concerto, and we
spent hours going over it. In her own hand,
she added helpful qualifications like “angry”
to a passage in the score which features
Hitchcock-like suspense”.
But there is more. On 27 April 1998, Thea
King bequeathed to Hendrikx the letters Finzi
had written to her late husband between
1948 and 1953: they document the first ideas
for the concerto, its genesis, and its growing
post-premiere fame. This is how Finzi initially
approached Thurston, a famed soloist he had
to convince of an unwritten concerto for a
modest fee:
Oct 2nd 1948
Dear Thurston,
Here is a difficult thing to write about. I was
asked to do another score for the Three
Choirs at Hereford next September: a work
for strings, without a soloist, was specified,
for the Friday morning September 9th.
But for some time I’ve wanted to do a short
concerto for clarinet & strings, and eventually
P. C. Hull agreed to let me have my way.
The first thing is to know whether you will
take an unwritten concerto on trust. Naturally,
if you are willing to do it, I should be as
grateful as I should be delighted.
Finzi then goes on about the dire straits the
Three Choirs festival is in, and the need for a
humble fee for Thurston:
So I said I would ask you privately what you
would do it for & whether a special fee would
be possible. Naturally, I don’t like doing this but
I feel rather responsible for having made P. C.
change his plans, though he seems very pleased
now at the idea of a clarinet work, especially as
they haven’t had such a thing before.
According to Hendrikx, “Finzi was a
prudent man who clearly wrote in function
of Thurston’s desires and abilities. Finzi
was first and foremost a composer of
vocal and especially choral music, and
concertos were clearly not his main turf.
So if Thurston suggests a note was too
high or uncomfortable, Finzi changed it
immediately.”
A number of letters written in the summer of
1949, perilously close to the work’s premiere,
document the composition process, and
Finzi’s delicate attitude which borders on the
insecure:
July 24th
(…)
Do you mind me sending the last two
movements first, then I can let you have the
first movement, which is shorter than these
two later on in August.
I thought that if you could have a look at the
notes (which are child’s play for you) we can
get down to tempi and details nearer the
time, when perhaps we could meet and go
through the score.
About these two movements. Do please let
me know if there is anything impracti[ca]
ble. At any rate, I hope I have left you more
breathing space than Milhaud did in that work
the other evening.
And three weeks later (Aug 13):
Here’s the first movement: I only hope that
the silence about the other two doesn’t mean
that you find them unspeakable.
(…) the little cadenza we can try out at
Oxford. Actually it doesn’t want to be more
than half a dozen bars, but it’s not easy to do,
though I think V. W. was right on that point.
I really was most grateful for the way you
worked on the concerto (…). If the Boyd Neel
lot do as you’ve suggested & get to know their
part beforehand, then I shall feel pretty safe
with one rehearsal. All the same, Toscanini
asks for six. How much more do I need 60!

Shortly after the concert (Sept 15th), Finzi Throughout the correspondence, Finzi
refers to some reviews, an extra cadenza profiles himself as an extraordinarily nice and
suggested by Vaughan Williams (V.W.) after benevolent person. A letter dated July 2nd
the premiere, and a follow-up performance by 1950 contains an evaluation of Thurston’s
the – at the time quite illustrious – Boyd Neel solo performance, as well as a tempo
Orchestra; Finzi casually throws in a reference recommendation:
to Arturo Toscanini (with whom Thurston had
recorded the Brahms Symphonies): I thought your playing was at the top of its
form & there’s not a thing that you do that I’d
I’ve seen a few notices of the concerto, mostly have otherwise (but don’t rush that Rondo
kind, though that means absolutely nothing. tune. It’s carefree & gay but not hectic).
However, it is nice to see the universal praise
of the soloist and I should be the first to agree In a letter dated Sept. 21st (probably 1950),
that all the care & trouble you took over the Finzi refers to the concerto’s eventual
work was the making of it. publisher Boosey & Hawkes (B & H) and an
upcoming performance of the concerto by
Iris Lemare’s String Orchestra – Iris Lemare,
by the way, was the first lady conductor of
the BBC Symphony Orchestra:
I heard from B & H yesterday, and they
casually mentioned that the work was to be
done on November 7th by the Lemare String
Orchestra. This is news to me and I have just
sent Iris Lemare a note that to warn her that it
is not an easy work and that her players had
better have the parts beforehand to work at.
(…) Have you been approached? If not I hope
to God that she doesn’t really imagine that
it can be handed to the second clarinet on
Scarborough pier.
and do some sightseeing in the concerto’s
spatiotemporal context: “Through Thea’s
notes in my score, and through the letters,
Thurston and Finzi speak out to me, as
it were. I am delighted to make their
acquaintance, and I intend to repay their
friendship by promoting their concerto as
passionately as possible. It deserves its place
in the clarinet canon so much.”
Stefan Grondelaers

It has been claimed that a picture says more

than a thousand words, but the Finzi-letters
represent a powerful time machine which
offers a rare insight into the peacefulness
and the rich musical life of post-war Britain.
They unveil a pastoral micro-cosmos which
shows little trace of the massacre Europe
had witnessed not half a decade earlier. The
letters enable Hendrikx to go beyond the
notes of the concerto, meet the protagonists,
Roeland Hendrikx is For this recording, Sanders Geerts is
a Henri Selmer Paris Roeland Hendrikx playing on a Falk
artist.  played the Selmer Peeters viola.
Recital clarinets.

LONDON VIOLIN II CELLI CLARINETS

PHILHARMONIC Helena Smart Francis Bucknall Robert Plane
ORCHESTRA: Ashley Stevens Gregory Walmsley Thomas Watmough
Fiona Higham Elisabeth Wiklander
VIOLIN I Joseph Maher Susanna Riddell BASSOONS
Pieter Schoeman Sioni Williams Richard Skinner
Katalin Varnagy Harry Kerr BASSES Angharad Thomas
Geoffrey Lynn Alison Strange Sebastian Pennar
Catherine Craig Georgina Leo Hugh Kluger HORNS
Sarah Streatfeild Kate Cole George Peniston Stephen Nicholls
Yang Zhang John Dickinson Elise Campbell
Tina Gruenberg FLUTES Martin Hobbs
Rebecca Shorrock VIOLAS Harry Winstanley Gareth Mollison
Rasa Zukauskaite Jon Thorne Emilia Zakrzewska
Katherine Waller Katharine Leek TRUMPETS
Susanne Martens OBOES Paul Beniston
Benedetto Pollani Ian Hardwick Anne McAneney
Laura Vallejo Alice Munday
Daniel Cornford TIMPANI
COR ANGLAIS Tom Lee
Sue Bohling
THANK YOU
Spaas Kaarsen NV Hamont, Hegge NV Hamont, Rotary Noord-Limburg.
Letters reproduced with the kind permission of Josephine Finzi

ALBUM CREDITS
This is a high resolution audio recording.
Recorded at Henry Wood Hall, London, UK, on April 7, 8 and 9 2018.
Recording, mixing and mastering by Steven Maes for MotorMusic Classic.
Musical director and editing: Felicia Bockstael
Assistant engineer: Floren Van Stichel

www.motormusic-classic.eu
www.motormusic-mastering.eu
Evil Penguin Classic
2018 EPRC 0026
www.evilpenguin.eu

An Evil Penguin Classic production.

In collaboration with:
www.roelandhendrikx.com

Photography:
Sleeve: © Johannes Vande Voorde
Booklet p. 1: © Diego Franssens
Picture Sander Geerts: © Luc Daelemans

Graphic design: Gerard Leysen

 DEDICATIONS – WORKS FOR CLARINET & ORCHESTRA
GERALD FINZI - WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART - MAX BRUCH
ROELAND HENDRIKX & THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
SANDER GEERTS - MARTYN BRABBINS

Gerald Finzi - Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra Op. 31

1. Allegro vigoroso 07:47
2. Adagio, ma senza rigore 11:16
3. Rondo. Allegro giocoso 08:46

W. A. Mozart - Concerto in A major for Clarinet and Orchestra KV 622

4. Allegro 12:54
5. Adagio 07:04
6. Rondo. Allegro 08:51

Max Bruch - Double Concerto for Clarinet and Viola with Orchestra Op. 88
7. Andante con moto 07:13
8. Allegro moderato 06:09
9. Allegro molto 05:41