Golden Label Nomination - There was quite a fuss about the fact that Roeland Hendrikx, laureate Golden Label Career 2018, was able to record Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. A top-notch achievement, certainly, but the CD offers more, and how!
Dedications, tributes, can in one word be better described as what this recording, not just any recording, stands for? Could Mozart, for example, have written his never-sufficiently-praised clarinet concerto without dedication? Can any musician perform it without dedication? That's not possible. It's also not possible in the first work on this CD, the much lesser-known clarinet concerto by Gerald Finzi (1901-1956). He was very fond of the clarinet and wrote many works for it. The concerto traces atmospheres that don't always sound so cheerful, tensions are almost the red thread running through the work, a kind of fear almost that is interwoven with soothing dreams. Listening to this work requires an attention that goes further and prompts you to listen again to understand it better. This is not a concerto that just anyone can perform, let alone have the courage to immortalize in a recording. Roeland Hendrikx does it, and with a conviction that pulls you along into everything this concerto stands for. It escapes the listener what difficulties the soloist must struggle through to bring Finzi's story in a flowing performance. Hendrikx does it.
Yes, THE Mozart on THE clarinet
The eye-catcher is undeniably Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, how could it be otherwise. There is no work so renowned for the clarinet as this concerto. I don't need to tell you why, even if it were the first time you heard it thanks to this recording. Listen and you know. Listen again, suddenly you hear different things, and again you know. That's how it is with genius things in music, in text, in painting, sculpture and architecture or whichever art form, which I also see in every form of science. That's simply what makes genius into genius, that extra that ordinary people don't have, but which overwhelms them.
This is not the first or last recording of this clarinet concerto. Did there really have to be another one? My answer: YES! If only for the andante. Where Roeland Hendrikx is already particularly subtle and delicate in Finzi's concerto in a way that you can't imagine a better interpretation, he is here, where possible, even more intense. Due to an unpleasant error by the Belgian post office, which delivered the CD well over a month after sending it, along with a whole series of other CDs that they apparently collected to drop in the mailbox whenever it suited them, I listened to the CD at a personally very emotional moment.
Believe it or not, it couldn't have come at a better time, because yes, this performance helped me process the particularly severe negative experience of that day. Would something else in music have helped? I don't know and I'm not going to find out, but it worked with this andante, which I listened to a couple of times that day. No, I deliberately didn't review the CD that day, that wouldn't have worked because of the emotions I had to process. It's perhaps an eye-opener that this CD, and certainly the andante from Mozart's clarinet concerto, and well yes, in this performance, can have a therapeutic effect. Make a note of it. Infinite thanks to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the first place, but also to, among others, Roeland Hendrikx!
How everything else sounds? You'll hear that. Voilà, anyone expecting a whole bunch of words from me about how it sounds is in for a disappointment. Why? Because there aren't immediately the right words, that's why. Because yes, please buy this CD, give yourself this gift and give it where possible as a gift, recommend it. Favoritism for Roeland Hendrikx, you think? It may be possible, but there is more. And you hear that in the third work on the CD…
Max Bruch's double concerto for clarinet and viola
"Huh?", I can already hear many thinking with furrowed brows. Is there a double concerto for clarinet and viola? Odd combination, isn't it, because who would come up with that? Then I wonder why this would be an odd combination. Reverse the question: why isn't more written for that combination, with or without orchestra?
Roeland Hendrikx managed to sign up one of Flanders' most striking violists and immediately gives him an international push – very justly! – to take on the solo part for the viola. What harmony between those two! Between the lines I quickly admit that I didn't know this work either. Thanks to Roeland Hendrikx and Sander Geerts, that's been remedied. To do it differently than usual, Bruch not only chose the clarinet and the viola as a solo duo, but he also turned the classical form of a concerto on its head and begins with an andante followed by two allegros.
Discover this concerto and discover how two of our top soloists conquer the world at their feet. They alone? No, they do it together with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by one of the world's best conductors, the all too modest Martyn Brabbins. What this man takes on is always without exception of a musically rare vision that testifies to absolute empathy with the life and work of the composer. It's a great gift that few have. For me, Brabbins belongs in the top 10 of conductors you must see and hear at work. The man also always goes for lesser-known work and chooses exclusively for the music, name or no name, if the quality is there, he goes for it. Could a better person have been found to definitively put our two Flemish names on the international map?
You see, dear reader, there are so many elements, of which I can only mention a few, that justify a Golden Label Nomination. Rarely do I listen to a cd so many times to be sure that my first impression was the right one and each time I am more convinced. Yes then, a Golden Label Nomination!
- WHAT: Dedications- works for clarinet & orchestra
- WHO: Roeland Hendrikx, Sander Geerts, Martyn Brabbins, London Philharmonic Orchestra
- RELEASE: Evilpenguin Classic, 2018 EPRC 00026[embed]https://youtu.be/MW4PMZ0Ir5E[/embed]