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Unity Within Diversity: The Unique Sound World of a Wind Quintet By CHARLES NEIDICH
When asked if I would write about the New York Woodwind Quintet's upcoming concert in Paul Hall on March 18, I thought it would be nice to begin by giving an impression of what it is like to play in this uniquely challenging chamber ensemble.
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| The New York Woodwind Quintet (Photo by Peter Schaaf) |
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Although thematic programs may have become popular nowadays, the N.Y.W.Q. (flutist Carol Wincenc, oboist Stephen Taylor, hornist William Purvis, bassoonist Donald MacCourt, and I) have always preferred to create programs with more subtle connections—programs that contain striking contrasts or find an organic unity within their diversity. It is, in fact, just this great diversity that characterizes a woodwind quintet, and creates the great challenge and satisfaction of playing in one.The challenge comes from the chameleon-like role each of us must play in order to mold an ensemble of five diverse instruments with dramatically varying tonal characteristics into a unified group. As a clarinetist, I find myself at times playing softer than I ever have to do in other ensembles; other times, I find myself molding the clarinet into a flute or a French horn (or any of the other instruments), trying to mimic their articulation and tonal body. That is also the great satisfaction of playing in a quintet. We can create group sonorities that go beyond anything which we can produce individually. For composers, that is also the great challenge and satisfaction of writing for quintet; out of the inherent heterophony of the ensemble, they can create new sounds, new blends. They can use the naturally diverse personalities of the instruments, and can also force them into roles quite outside their "normal" ways of sounding. In fact, each of the works on our March program casts the quintet into a unique world of sound.Paul Taffanel, whose life spanned much of the Romantic age, was one of the most influential musicians in France in the later half of the 19th century. The father of the modern French school of flute playing, he was also the seminal influence on American flute playing through his two most famous students, Georges Barrère and Marcel Moyse. He was a tireless champion of woodwinds, founding the Société des Instruments à Vent in 1879 to promote the playing of wind instruments and composing a quintet to show the world that the woodwind quintet was capable of the nobility and range of expression people usually associated with the orchestra. His Quintet in G Minor, the opening work on the program, has numerous references to great works of his time; two that you may very well recognize on first hearing are references to the Beethoven Ninth and Brahms Third Symphonies.Following Taffanel, we turn to György Ligeti's 10 Pieces for Woodwind Quintet. Ligeti, one of the great composers living today, wrote the 10 Pieces in 1968, not long after he had written his seminal works Atmospheres, Requiem, and Lux aeterna, in which he created a distinctly new palette of orchestral and choral color. In the 10 Pieces, Ligeti composed 10 brilliant studies to highlight the coloristic and virtuosic possibilities of the woodwind quintet—much as Elliott Carter had done even earlier in his Eight Etudes and a Fantasy for Woodwind Quartet (though Ligeti's work goes even farther than Carter's in creating a new world of sound). Each of the 10 movements can be likened to a miniconcerto for one of the instruments or a different combination of the five, creating a constantly changing impression of what the quintet sound actually consists of.
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New York Woodwind Quintet
Paul Hall
Thursday, March 18, 8 p.m.
For ticket information, please see
the calendar.
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The second half of our concert opens with two miniatures. The first is my own contribution: Whirlwinds for flute and clarinet. I wrote it to be performed at the Turku Festival in Finland, but only finished it on the plane trip to Helsinki. The flutist with whom I was to perform it declined apologetically, saying that it was too difficult to learn in such a short time, and the piece has sat on the shelf in my study until now, when we will present its premiere performance. I wrote the duet as a wistful memorial to Samuel Baron and Ronald Roseman, two wonderful musicians who were colleagues from the New York Woodwind Quintet. It is loosely based on the motive "muss es sein?" from Beethoven's last String Quartet, Op. 135, a motive that Ronald Roseman used as the basis of his Woodwind Quintet. The character of my short piece, however, is very different. While Ronnie's quintet is both intense and reflective, mine is flighty and light-hearted, an all-too-brief celebration of Sam's and Ronnie's positive natures and the joy and excitement they always felt when discovering new things in music.The second of the miniatures is Oliver Knussen's Three Little Fantasies. Although Knussen—who has made as much of a name for himself as a conductor as a composer—wrote the Three Little Fantasies when he was 18, they can hardly be called juvenilia. Miniatures with character, they are wonderfully subtle and sophisticated, with bows to composers of the 20th century as diverse as Anton Webern, Elliott Carter, and György Ligeti. In a way that may very well have taken its inspiration from the Ligeti 10 Pieces, he presents three contrasting movements: the first a series of cadenzas, the second a cute exercise in Klangfarbenmelodie, the third an intricate canon in four different speeds.To end the program, we return to the beginning of the 20th century. To celebrate Antonín Dvorak (the 100th anniversary of whose death is this year), we thought it appropriate to resurrect Georges Barrère's wonderful arrangement of Dvorak's String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96 ("American"). Barrère, one of Taffanel's most brilliant pupils, was also devoted to furthering the cause of woodwind playing and composing. In 1896 he formed a new Société Moderne d'Instruments à Vent, replacing Taffanel's group, which had disbanded in 1893. From 1905, when Walter Damrosch invited him to join the New York Symphony Orchestra, he made his home in the United States. I should note that this very colorful transcription has a close association with the New York Woodwind Quintet: Samuel Baron studied with Barrère. A masterful arranger himself, Sam most certainly helped Barrère with this arrangement.So we see that the New York Woodwind Quintet concert runs a full circle—beginning with a work by one of the greatest flutists of the 19th century, who ceaselessly championed wind playing and the wind quintet, and ending with a transcription of a work Dvorak wrote at just about the same time as Taffanel wrote his and transcribed by Taffanel's most famous student, Georges Barrère. Come and enjoy!Charles Neidich, clarinetist of the New York Woodwind Quintet, has been a faculty member since 1989.
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