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Richard Stoltzman: Not a Moment's Boredom
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11586 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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9 / 1986 |
838 Words |
| Author
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Richard Buell
Richard Buell is a free-lance music critic residing in Boston. |
Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman's direct, affectionate manner has often been noticed. In a master class recently he left off explaining what was making a scared young student clarinetist's Brahmas sound so stiff and asked, "Can't I just give you a hug?"
Experience has taught the boyish, forty-four year old Stoltzman how to cope when the compliment is returned. The first thing he does at the end of an orchestral concert, he has said, is to cover his instrument's reed, so that if the conductor hugs him, it won't be ruined. The risk is not exactly a small one; Stoltzman makes about 100 concert appearances a year.
If Stoltzman is a bankable commodity these days, part of the reason lies in his apparent willingness, and his ability to do everything. A Stoltzman solo recital draws on a number of repertoires - music written expressly for the clarinet; music transcribed from other instruments; and an unpredictably expansive third category that includes the innocuous jazz/pop/easy-listening mixture that comes vaguely under the heading of "crossover."
Early in July Stoltzman appeared in recital with pianist Richard Goode at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestras (BSO) summer home in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. The occasion was touched by a certain irony, since there was once a time - when both were associated with the Marlboro Festival - when the much admired Harold Wright, now the principal clarinetist of the BSO, was not that convinced that Stoltzman was in the right business. It was intimated that perhaps he might consider engineering.
It was tempting to listen for the particularities to style and temperament that prompted that judgment. In the very first minute it was obvious that Stoltzman is not the sort of clarinetist who is content to play safe. Some of the playing, in fact, verged on the indiscreet. The opening piece, Schubert's Sonatina in A minor, Opus 137, No. 2 originally composed for violin, seemed to bring out a strange sort of defensiveness in the performers, who pushed impatiently against bar lines, the molto expressive to and fro would have caused rows filled with raised eyebrows at the staider sort of violin recital. There was body English in it too. In Debussy's sinuous Premier Rapsodie there were some of the dramatic, explosive qualities that make some of his fellow clarinetists nervous; also, from time to time, a deliberately unpretty edge to the tone, which is likewise controversial. But there was not a moment's
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