Download Emma Johnson - North Devon Theatres

Emma Johnson
John Lenehan, piano
Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple
Wednesday 27 February 2013, 7.30pm
Programme
BRAHMS
Clarinet Sonata in F minor, Op.120, No.1
WEBER
Grand Duo Concertant, Op.48
~ Interval ~
POULENC
Sonata for Clarinet and Piano
STRAVINSKY
Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo
RACHMANINOV
Vocalise, Op.34, No.14
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Flight of the Bumble Bee
Emma Johnson (MBE), clarinet
Emma Johnson is one of the few clarinettists to have established an international career as a soloist. She has
performed across Europe, the USA and the Far East, as well as in Africa and Australia in venues such as the
Kennedy Center, the Concertgebouw, the Louvre and the Barbican. In Britain she has achieved particular
popularity - her two discs on the Universal label, Voyage and The Mozart Album, spent many weeks at the top
of the Classical Charts.
Emma grew up in London and began to study the clarinet at the age of nine. In 1984 she won the BBC Young
Musician of the Year Competition and was a medal winner in the Eurovision Young Musician televised
throughout Europe. She was later to be a winner of the Young Concert Artist Auditions in New York. These
competitions launched Emma’s musical career whilst she was still at school, but she decided to study Music
and English at Cambridge University before embarking full-time on musical life.
One of the chief inspirations for Emma’s music making has been listening to great singers; when she plays the
clarinet she tries to emulate the expressive power of the human voice. Another goal has been to get better
acceptance for the clarinet as a solo classical instrument, and she is known for drawing upon a large range of
musical expression in her concerts. In May 2008 the Daily Telegraph wrote ‘To make a successful career as a
solo clarinettist is especially hard, but Emma Johnson has managed it’.
Emma Johnson has appeared as soloist with many leading orchestras including the London Symphony,
Philharmonia, Hallé, Tokyo Philharmonic, Salzburg Camerata and Netherlands Philharmonic in repertoire which
includes over forty different concertos. A new development in Emma’s career has seen her being invited not
only to direct from the clarinet, but also to conduct orchestras such as the London Mozart Players and the
Royal Philharmonic.
Emma is also in demand as a recitalist and chamber musician. She has collaborated with quartets such as the
Takacs, Brodsky and ConTempo and she is director of her own ensemble, ‘Emma Johnson and Friends’, a
versatile wind and string group.
Emma has achieved great success as a recording artist with over 20 discs to her name. Her Finzi Concerto CD
was nominated for a Gramophone Award and Pastoral was a CD of the year in the BBC Music Magazine.
Details of her recordings as well as her concert schedule are available on Emma’s website
www.emmajohnson.co.uk.
Emma’s TV appearances have ranged from prime time chat shows to gala concerts with Cleo Laine and
Yehudi Menuhin. She was a featured artist in The Music Room shown on Sky Arts in 2010. Radio appearances
include ‘Artist of the Week’ on both BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM. She enjoys writing about music and has
presented various feature programmes, including most recently a Radio 4 broadcast about the composer,
Gerald Finzi which was chosen as a ‘Pick of the Week’. The theme tune played by Emma for the Victorian
Kitchen Garden series on BBC television became a popular hit.
As well as the traditional repertoire, Emma takes an interest in contemporary composers. Her recording of
Michael Berkeley’s challenging Clarinet Concerto received widespread critical acclaim. John Dankworth has
written several jazz-inspired works for Emma including a clarinet concerto premiered at the Royal Festival Hall
with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. She is currently collaborating on a new work for children with
Jonathan Dove.
Although she lacks the time to teach on a regular basis, Emma has given master classes in many countries and
was previously a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music in London. Her new clarinet course based on
her master class teaching is available from www.icanplayit.com. Several books of Emma’s compositions and
arrangements for clarinet have been published by Chester Music, Faber Music and Kevin Mayhew.
A patron of ClicSargent the childhood cancer charity, Emma likes to support a number of good causes through
her concerts. She was recently the first woman to be made an honorary fellow of Pembroke College
Cambridge, and in 1996 Emma was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to music.
Emma Johnson plays an instrument by the English clarinet maker Peter Eaton.
John Lenehan, piano
Praised by the New York Times for his ‘great flair and virtuosity’ and by the London Times for giving ‘a masterly
recital’, John Lenehan’s performances and recordings have been acclaimed throughout the world. As a soloist
he has regularly appeared with leading British Orchestras and his innovative recital programmes often include
film projection and jazz repertoire. In a performing career spanning more than 25 years John Lenehan has also
collaborated with many of today’s leading instrumentalists and is recognised as one of the leading
accompanists and chamber musicians of today. During the past few years he has appeared in major concert
halls in London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Salzburg, New York, Washington, Toronto, Seoul and Tokyo.
John Lenehan has made more than fifty CDs. Most recent has been the first in a new association with
Sony/BMG - a double CD entitled The Quiet Room in which he is featured as soloist, arranger and composer. In
the near future Sony will release six new CDs featuring piano music by composers as diverse as Philip Glass and
Scott Joplin. Other solo recordings include a disc of Erik Satie, John Ireland’s complete piano music and a
Gramophone award winning recording for Naxos of Michael Nyman’s Piano Concerto with the Ulster
Orchestra.
John Lenehan is also active as a composer and has written and arranged for Kennedy, Julian Lloyd Webber,
Tasmin Little and Emma Johnson on CD. Recent writing projects include Keynotes - four books of piano
repertoire published by Faber.
Music each containing a new Lenehan work and a collection of original pieces for flute and piano called Little
Gems which is published by Schotts. Recent highlights have included recitals in Toronto with Rivka Golani,
China with Julian Lloyd Webber, South America with Tasmin Little and concerto appearances in India with the
Uralsk Philharmonic and France with Sinfonia Varsovia in concertos by Mozart and Shostakovich.
BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Clarinet Sonata in F minor, Op.120, No.1
I. Allegro appassionato II. Andante un poco adagio III. Allegretto grazioso IV. Vivace
In 1890 Brahms completed his String Quartet in G major, Op.111, and announced that this would be his final
work as, at 57, he was giving up composing. Around this time many of his old friends died and with a feeling of
depression he became obsessed with his own mortality. Fortunately he received a new stimulus and the
decision was reversed. For that we owe a debt to one man. In March 1891 Brahms visited Meiningen to hear
one of the finest orchestras of the day, under its new conductor Fritz Steinbach. He was immediately impressed
by the playing of the orchestra’s clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld and a firm friendship soon developed between
the two men. It was Mühlfeld who provided the stimulus for Brahms to write his last four great chamber works –
the Clarinet Quintet, the Clarinet Trio, and the two Clarinet Sonatas.
Spectacular virtuosity was abhorrent to Brahms and neither of the Clarinet Sonatas exploit fully the technical
capabilities of the instrument. He drew no more than economically upon its tonal qualities, the expression of
passion and pathos were sparingly used, and he tended to avoid the shrill, upper register. The opening Allegro
of the F minor, with a brief piano introduction, conveys a sense of gravity, but it continues with lyrical ideas
illustrated by a yearning clarinet melody. A large number of distinct themes are introduced and developed
until a calming sostenuto coda, in the major key, brings eventual rest. The pensive slow movement has a single
main tune, first heard on the clarinet over a soft piano accompaniment. The dreamy mood is never broken,
through to the final bars.
A graceful intermezzo, with restrained animation, forms the third movement. In the manner of an Austrian
Ländler, it develops a certain vigour in its second theme, and a delicate central section explores the clarinet’s
lower chalumeau register. There is no diminution of energy in the final Vivace. Three chiming minims open the
movement and turn up in various guises throughout the rondo structure, with its chuckling theme. The sonatas
date from 1894 and both were issued with the viola as an alternative to the clarinet. A revision for violin and
piano appeared in the following year.
WEBER (1786-1826)
Grand Duo Concertant, Op.48
I. Allegro con fuoco II. Andante con moto III. Rondo: Allegro
The Grand Duo Concertant was one of the works Weber wrote for the virtuoso clarinettist Heinrich Bärmann, a
man who had served in a military band, been captured at Jena, undertaken an extensive European tour, and
ended up as one of the most highly esteemed members of the Munich Court orchestra. It was here that Weber
met the great clarinettist and an immediate rapport ensued. Of the three movements of the Duo, the Andante
and the Rondo were the first to be written and performed by Weber and Bärmann in Munich in July, 1815, but
the Allegro was not added until November of the following year. The Duo is accurately named in that it is not a
sonata for clarinet with piano accompaniment, but a work requiring equal virtuosity from both players and the
music is deployed accordingly. The themes of the first movement are derived to suit each instrument equally,
and throughout the work brilliant scale passages in unison, thirds and sixths, are prominent.
Even in the Andante, where the cantabile qualities of the clarinet may suggest that it is taking the lead, the
piano stakes its own claim with an ornate episode built upon a rich semiquaver figuration which remains to
colour the music on the return of the clarinet. But the cantabile theme reassumes prominence to bring the
movement to an end. Again, in the Rondo the clarinet seems to be dominating but an ingenious distribution of
material ensures that the partnership is maintained on equal terms. This is music in Weber’s most entertainingly
brilliant vein.
POULENC (1899-1963)
Sonata for Clarinet and Piano
I. Allegro tristamente II. Romanza III. Allegro con fuoco
Like Saint-Saëns and Debussy, near the end of his life Francis Poulenc planned a series of sonatas which he was
destined to leave unfinished. Only the sonatas for clarinet, flute and oboe were completed, the one for clarinet
dating from 1962. His music is typically French, with a lightness of touch and a hint of mischief which makes it
immediately approachable. Melody is always the most important element, illustrated in the main theme of the
first movement, and in the Romanza of the Clarinet Sonata, but harmony, rhythm and texture add to an entirely
personal style. What seems to be a clash of directions at the beginning of the sonata where, although the
opening movement is marked Allegro tristamente the tempo instruction is ‘Allegretto’, leaves some leeway for
the players. However, a fairly brisk approach usually fits the music best. The finale – Allegro con fuoco, with the
further instruction ‘très animé’, is also full of life.
STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)
Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo
These miniatures reveal a completely different side of Stravinsky from the composer of the massive ballets, The
Rite of Spring, Petrouchka, and The Firebird. They were written in the town of Morges in 1919, during his stay in
Switzerland, after leaving Russia. Written for the amateur clarinettist Werner Reinhart, as a mark of gratitude for
the way in which he had generously financed the first production of the dramatic chamber work The Soldier’s
Tale, they were first publicly performed by Edmond Allegra, at Lausanne, on November 8, 1919. All three pieces
last for less than four minutes. The first two are written for the clarinet in A, and the third for the B flat instrument.
Only the first of the pieces is headed with an instruction as to tempo – ‘Sempre piano e molto tranquillo’ – while
the other two just have tempo speeds of 168 and 160 to the quaver, respectively. In a mood of tranquility and
meditation, the first exploits the lower range of the instrument. The second demonstrates its originality by being
written without barlines, adding to its improvisatory feel. Fast flowing arpeggios and arabesque give way to a
slower, quieter middle section at a lower pitch. The final piece, reminiscent of Tango and Ragtime, looks back
to The Soldier’s Tale in style.
RACHMANINOV (1873-1943)
Vocalise, Op.34, No.14
The vocalise was originally a wordless vocal exercise sung to one or more vowels. The addition of a piano
accompaniment meant that even the most mechanical of exercises could be sung in a more interesting and
artistic manner, but it was not until the early 20th century that composers turned to the vocalise as a concert
piece.
It was in 1912 that the poet Marietta Shaginian wrote anonymously to Rachmaninov suggesting poems by
Pushkin, Polonsky and others that he might set to music. He was sufficiently intrigued to take up her suggestions
and 13 of the 14 songs in his Op.34 were set accordingly with dedications to the legendary bass Shalyapin
(Chaliapin) and the tenor Leonid Sobinov. However, the final song, dedicated to the soprano Nezhdanova,
was to be a vocalise. It was revised in 1915 and later the composer himself made a transcription for orchestra.
Its lyrical qualities and soaring melody have made it a very popular piece, encouraging various arrangements
for a number of different instruments with either piano or orchestra.
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908)
Flight of the Bumble Bee
The well-known Flight of the Bumble Bee is an orchestral interlude in Act III of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Tsar
Saltan, composed during the winter of 1898-1900. It is a fairy-tale opera based on Pushkin’s poem and intended
as a centenary tribute to the poet. It takes place in the legendary city of Tmutarakania and the island of Buyan.
In the Third Act Prince Guidon sends a message by sea to his father, expressing his longing for home. He asks
the swan for help and is advised to transform himself into an insect and fly to confront his father in person. He
chooses the form of a bumble bee and his flight is realistically described with vivid pictorialism in the famous
chromatic passage which has been transcribed from the original orchestral version to arrangements for almost
every conceivable solo instrument.
© John Dalton – 2013