Clar Ctos [Import]

I admire Thea King and her work as a clarinetist and solo artist in many respects, however many aspects of her playing simply kill the sense of marvel and beauty that the Finzi concerto has. King is not the only one, as I am particularly disappointed in several recordings of the concerto.

For example, Emma Johnson has some wonderful moments with this Concerto, but musicality ends up coming across as lack of control, and there are many intonation problems when making big transition between high and low notes.

Donague's recording is "okay", yet many moments are ruined by bad orchestral playing.

For this recording by King... simply put, this performance is just average (if that) in my honest opinion. The sound is cluttered with a distracting buzz from her horn as well as inconsistent carriage of sound and tone throughout several passages. Unfortunately there is a noticeable honkiness to the sound, and many passages are overly articulated in specific sections the piece that clearly call for a separated, yet legato articulation.

Particular faults were in the final movement of the Finzi, which is a rather playful Rondo that should be high spirited and smooth flowing in a way that reminds you of being a child again, running around on a playground with arms spread wide pretending to be an airplane. Unfortunately however, King uses a rather jaunty style, which gives me the impression that she was bobbing her head up and down, with a forceful bobb every two seconds to keep the beat. The smooth airplane ride, hence, transformed to a helicopter ride - or more descriptively... a chopper!

There are some beautifully phrased ad lib moments near the end, but I was grossly disappointed at the closing with the 16th runs. They are rushed and inconsistent, though I think _some_ of it was intended to be "musical flavor". King finishes it off amateurly while displaying some inability to overcome some limitations of the horn that many professionals of her caliber should be able to get past. Particularly noticeable was a big break before the last 16th set preceeding the closing trill. This could be seen as musical, but knowing the piece... there's no break written (no grand pause, no breath), there's no "ad lib" written, it's not a cadenza, and... (as a clarinetist) I know this was only a result of a struggle to make it to that climax (the high F# leading the final arpeggio group into the trill). It makes you wonder somewhat if the CD skipped... or if the sound engineers just made a bad cut.

In any case, all in all, this CD is good for someone who just admires/likes clarinet music; but don't expect to be amazed if you have a classically trained ear and have experience hearing many clarinet performances. I'll admit, I am a classical concert clarinetist, hence my critique is somewhat biased due to the fact that I've heard this piece performed much better than in this recording and know the ins and outs of clarinet playing. I was just disappointed that all of the instrument dependent technical difficulties were blatantly obvious in this performance. Those things should neither come out nor be apparent to anyone (clarinetists included) in a recording.

This Hyperion recording is the second copy of the Finzi Concerto that I own, and it is positively brilliant. Originally recorded in August and September of 1979, soloist Thea King captures the nuances of both the Finzi piece, and Stanford's Concerto, with grace and clarity. Finzi himself was apparently quite shy, and there are glimpses of that retiring character in the music, which varies between the powerfully orchestra and the heart-felt tones of the solo clarinet. Perhaps the closest comparison which springs to mind is that of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Oboe Concerto, although the contrasts and differences would be too many to list - not to mention being beyond my technical ability to describe. Suffice it to say that this is a lovely recording, one which no afficianado of late-nineteenth and twentieth century English music should be without.

The disc opens with the Stanford Clarinet Concerto, which again displays King's talents quite brilliantly. Charles Stanford, a (certainly unjustly) lesser known English composer and teacher (of such famous students as Holst, Vaughan Williams, Ireland, and Frank Bridge), wrote numerous works, including several pieces for the clarinet, although many of these remained unpublished and comparatively unknown well into the 1970s. This recording demonstrates that such incognition is a terrible injustice, and I have rarely heard pieces written for any instrument to surpass the beauty of the second movement, Andante con moto.

In short, lovers of the clarinet and lovers of English music should find common ground with this disc. Enjoy.