A programme offered for radio stations, festivals and universities - the best of the 20th century clarinet

ALBAN BERG
4 Pieces Op 5 for clarinet and piano

EDISON DENISOV
Sonata

ROSS EDWARDS
The Tower of Remoteness

ISANG YUN
Riul for clarinet and piano

DON BANKS
4x2x1 for clarinets and tape

This is a unique programme extending the clarinet's sound world, whilst at the same time holding an audiences' interest in purely musical terms.

The Alban Berg introduces extremes of dynamics, flutter tonguing, echo-tone and playing into the grand piano with the sustaining pedal on. This last excites the strings which sound without being struck by the hammers.

These Four Pieces are epigrammatic with coded references to, amongst other music, Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

Ross Edwards's Tower of Remoteness carries on Berg's techniques to create a sound world of infinite stillness. With the sustaining pedal constantly on, clarinet sounds fuse with the piano sonorities, and with the sudden damping of loud piano chords followed by their release, the ensuing harmonics.

To the techniques of Berg and Edwards, Denisov adds a quarter-tone scale.

Micro-tonal inflexions common in Indian and Arabic music colour the line, adding aural interest and excitement.

In Riul (a Korean game), Isang Yun sets clarinet and piano against each other in music of scintillating sparkle, proving that twelve note techniques need not be sterile or dull. Sustained lines are contrasted with passages of extreme virtuosity unprecedented in wind instrument literature. Extreme ornamentation draws the music towards a shattering climax.

Electro-acoustic music, it can be argued, is the logical outcome of all this intense development. Computer generated sounds can provide sonorities and textures unavailable to conventional instruments. Don Banks's 4x2x1 is one of the very few completely successful essays in this medium. It had its genesis in a short solo piece called "One for Murray". Click on the image below to download a PDF version of the score.

Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald after its first performance at the Adelaide Festival, Roger Covell wrote:

"Four movements, two clarinets (one player doubling Bb Clarinet and Bass Clarinet) and One Tape Operator. The tape sounds have variety and aural perspective. The electronic sonorities sometimes serve as accompanying textures and sometimes answer the clarinet in precisely timed and pulsed measures. The piece is not, praise be, inert or fogbound. Its lyrical sections gather themselves together and become speedy and irreverent. The opening little five note throwaway gesture seems to spread itself throughout the music, ingeniously re-shaped and animated. The piece ends on a note of quasi-farcical parody. The clarinetist rises to his feet to receive an elaborate cut-off signal from the tape operator. It is a thoroughly successful debut for 4x2x1. Its craftsmanship is evident and enjoyable. Its matter is absorbing, its manner entertaining."