Harold Wright (1927-1993) was principal clarinettist
of the Casals Festival Orchestra for seven seasons, then for
a further seventeen seasons took part in the Marlboro Festival
with Rudolph Serkin. From 1970 he was principal clarinettist
of the Boston Symphony Orchestra but also a regular collaborator
in chamber music groups in leading US Festivals. In the course
of his career he worked alongside most of the leading musicians
of the day, and clarinettists will readily testify that a finer
player never lived. In view of this the records are not exactly
numerous. All the more reason to be grateful for the present
offering, which should be enough to preserve his name for ever
more.
I recently
had to write about an Arte Nova disc by Ralph Manno and
Alfred Perl in which practically everything was wrong that could
be. Listen to Wright launch the first Sonata with a sublime
simplicity of phrasing, at a tempo which gives him all the time
he needs to express the music yet with enough lift to carry
him through to the end of the movement, and somehow you know
you’re getting the truth about the music. Peter Serkin has at
times been accused of trying to establish a personal identity
by doing things differently from his father no matter what the
result, and there a few hints in this opening movement that
he would like to be a little more rhapsodic. But he is also
known to be a superbly responsive chamber musician, and he quickly
understands what Wright is after and settles down to be a perfect
partner. A certain boxiness in the acoustics of the hall initially
gives the impression that he is bass-heavy in climaxes, but
again, he quickly adjusts and this ceased to trouble me after
the first few minutes. The recording is more than adequate to
preserve Wright’s tone, which is sweet and round yet with a
substance to it, and capable of infinite gradations of pianos
and pianissimos. His breath control is seemingly unlimited.
To maintain the "Andante un poco adagio" of this first
Sonata at a properly slow tempo but with a sense of rocking
movement that never lets it become becalmed sounds so easy when
it is done like this (sample 1); many musicians live their lives
out without achieving it. Or to enter with the finale’s theme
in such a gently chuckling way as to bring a lump to the listener’s
throat (sample 2); there is a lifetime’s experience combined
here with the freshness of first discovery.
This is very late Brahms; only the "Four
Serious Songs" and the virtually-completed Chorale-Preludes
for organ remained to be written. Somehow Brahms, a heavy-headed
sage in his youth, grew younger with the passing years, achieving
a sublime simplicity in the opening movement of the second Sonata
that remains a thing to be wondered at, even by his own standards.
As does the no less sublime simplicity (sorry to keep repeating
this phrase, but what else can I say?) of this performance of
it (sample 3).
Since the Schumann pieces find Wright and Serkin
fully alert to the composer’s intertwining of melody between
the two partners it should be evident that this is a disc which,
even if the sound was not quite state-of-the-art even ten years
ago, cannot be missed by anyone who cares about either Brahms
or about the clarinet. By chance, I heard it on the same day
as the Menuhin group’s recording of the Brahms B flat Sextet
(CDE
5 74957 2). Recordings like these, by musicians with
links that go back to traditions of music-making that are fast
disappearing, should be heard again and again by those musicians
who are learning their craft today, not so as to clone them,
but so as to understand and preserve some of the humanity which
went into the making of them.
Christopher Howell
Harold Wright (clarinet),
Peter Serkin (pianoforte) 