Von Weber Archives - NativeDSD Music

5th International Clarinet Competition Ghent

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 04:30:27 +0000

Live Recording of the 5th International Clarinet Competition Ghent!

The original idea for this fifth clarinet competition was that it would be part of the “Van Eyck project 2020 – 2021”.

Everyone knows why this has been delayed by a year. For this competition, three composers were asked to write a new work inspired by the characteristic painting by Jan Van Eyck, “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb”. The composers Alain Crepin (Lam Gods Impressions), Johan Duijck (L’Homme désarmé) and Dirk Brossé (The Secret of the Mystic Lamb) have succeeded in this in a very special way.

The International Clarinet Competition Ghent has now been organized for the fifth time. It has now grown into a special and highly appreciated competition that, due to its great and quickly built up success, has attracted registrations from more than 200 candidates from 5 continents. Of these, 65 clarinetists were selected to participate.

On this album you can listen to the three finalists and enjoy their exceptional playing. Accompanied by the Flanders Symphony Orchestra, the Zemlinsky Quartet, Johan Duijck (piano) and soprano Franches Dhont, they will take you into the atmosphere of the competition!

Clarinet Players
Angel Martin Mora – Clarinet
Arthur Stockel – Clarinet
Szymon Parulski – Clarinet

Accompanying Musicians
Flanders Symphony Orchestra
Zemlinsky Quartet
Johan Duijck – Piano
Franches Dhont – Soprano

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An die Geliebte

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In the Romantic era, thousands of songs and poems emerged from the wellspring of unre- quited love. At first glance, the tracklist on this album might seem like a simple collection of my favourite songs on that subject. Actually I’ve been fine-honing this compilation for quite some time, and so intensely that now I almost feel as if the result was something I composed myself. In planning my first solo lied album, I found this extremely important. I wanted to ex- press so much more than the narrow confines of a great Romantic cycle such as Die schöne Mül- lerin or Dichterliebe could have permitted.

While studying in Freiburg, one day I came across a miniature score of Beethoven’s “Dis- tant Beloved”. I immediately went out and also bought his “Letters to the Immortal Beloved”, where the Titan opens up his very soul. In my opinion, those letters are probably the key el- ement in helping us grasp what the “Distant Beloved” song cycle is about. Until then I had imagined Beethoven as a harsh, bitter man. Now, in his letters, I was flabbergasted to find him expressing himself in such impatient, en- thusiastic, love-besotted terms. The “Distant Beloved” cycle was published in early 1816. It is special for two reasons: it is the only song cycle Beethoven ever wrote, and it represents the first through-composed song cycle in music history. With this in mind, it almost made me nervous to discover a series of songs by Weber that hardly anyone knew, written practically in parallel with Beethoven’s song cycle. I thought it would be fascinating to place the two works side by side. Weber’s tongue-in-cheek title The Four Tempera- ments On the Loss of the Beloved is not the only element suggesting that the cycle should be included in a programme such as this one; I also find it great fun to slip again and again into the different roles these songs contain.

Julian Prégardien

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Beethoven – Symphony No. 7

Sjoerd Staal — Sun, 19 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

What would it have been like to hear Beethoven’s seventh symphony at the first performance? How did listeners react to hearing the endless repetition of the first movement’s dotted rhythm? Would they have been shocked to hear the melody of the second movement which repeats the same note twelve times? How did they respond to the finale’s obsessive rhythmical drive which must have seemed like the rock music of the nineteenth century? It’s ‘exciting’ to hear this well known symphony together with contemporary works which may have been performed in the same year. Wilhelm Wilms followed the classical tradition of Haydn and Mozart with some innovative moments. His 5th symphony, composed a few years earlier had been published during the time when Beethoven worked on his masterpiece. The most popular composer of the day was undoubtedly Rossini. He created a completely new vocal style that influenced many other musicians. The slow movement of Weber’s clarinet concerto for example sounds more operatic than instrumental in character. This was the environment in which Beethoven developed his strikingly original ideas. It must have been quite an ‘ear opener’ to hear a symphony start with gentle wind chamber music supported by massive accents of the rest of the orchestra. What a contrast! Iván Fischer On 8 and 12 December 1813, two charity concerts took place in Vienna during which Ludwig von Beethoven conducted some new orchestral works. In the fall of that year the combined Austrian and Bavarian troops had beaten the French troops in the decisive battle at Hanau, ringing in a long expected beginning of the end of the Napoleontic wars. It had been a terribly bloody battle with many victims on both sides. The proceeds of the two concerts accrued to the widows and orphans of the fallen Austrian soldiers. It is understandable that in the euphoria of that moment, the Austrian victory on the French, Beethoven’s works that were performed were considered victory music. For one of the pieces, the Symphony nr.7 in A-major, that is an apt description. It is a work with a positive, optimistic, (…….)

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