Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
Première Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra, L116 (1910) [9:02]
Carl NIELSEN (1865-1831)
Clarinet Concerto, Opus 57 (FS129) (1928) [24:17]
Witold LUTOSŁAWSKI (1913-1994)
Dance Preludes for Clarinet, Percussion, Harp, Piano, and Strings (1954)
[10:25]
Aaron COPLAND (1900-1990)
Clarinet Concerto (1948) [17:29]
Blaž Šparovec (clarinet)
Odense Symphony Orchestra/Anna Skryleva, Vincenzo Milletarì (Debussy)
rec. 15-18 June, 2020 and live, 16-17 September, 2020 (Debussy), Odense
Concert Hall, Odense, Denmark
Reviewed as downloaded from press preview
ORCHID CLASSICS ORC100168
[61:22]
Based on the evidence of this album, Slovenian clarinetist Blaž Šparovec has a long and prosperous career ahead of him. Whether he chooses to spend
the bulk of that career as an orchestral clarinetist or a soloist, I think
he will find success either way. He is currently principal clarinetist in
the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, a very fine orchestra of international
standing, as readers will already be aware, and also holds a
distinguished teaching post in Berlin. With the quality of his playing
exhibited on this album, Cologne should do everything in their power to
keep him in their orchestra, as he is surely one of the world’s leading
orchestral-principal clarinetists at this time.
Šparovec won the clarinet division of the 2019 Carl Nielsen Competition,
hosted by the Danish orchestra on this album, the Odense Symphony
Orchestra, a very prestigious prize indeed, well known among clarinetists
throughout the world (as well as flautists and violinists) for the
difficulty of performing Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto (and Flute Concerto
and Violin Concerto, respectively). Šparovec has won several other
competition prizes as well, as is enumerated in this album’s booklet
biography.
Orchid Classics offers this album as a download in standard or hi-res
format, or as a standard CD. For this review, I listened to the standard
download in 44 kHz/16-bit sound (standard CD quality).
Three of the four pieces on this album are well-known established staples
in the solo clarinet repertoire, Debussy’s Première Rhapsody, the
aforementioned Nielsen Concerto, and Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto. The
other piece, Witold Lutosławski’s Dance Preludes has not quite
reached the same level of popularity as the other three, but that may be
only a matter of time. For now, suffice to say that the entire program is
one of excellent quality.
Being an ex-professional clarinetist myself (although, admittedly, nowhere
near the level of accomplishment exhibited here by Mr. Šparovec), I have
been familiar with this literature for most of my life, and actually
performed the Première Rhapsody myself. (I also dabbled with the
Nielsen Concerto long enough to quickly realize that I had no business
performing that monster of a clarinet concerto!)
In my collection, I also have recordings of this album’s selections
variously performed by George Pieterson (Debussy: Decca Duo CDs 4387422 –
review
of earlier reissue), Richard Stolzman (Copland: RCA CD G010000245032E
or 40-CD collection 88985389642), Sabine Meyer
(Nielsen: Warner Classics CD 3944212), Vladimir Soltan (Nielsen and Debussy: MDG SACD 901 1964-6), and
Martin Fröst (Nielsen: BIS Records SACD 1463,
review
and Copland: BIS Records SACD 1863,
review), five of the world’s greatest clarinetists, so even having won the
Nielsen Competition, Sparovec will still face some fearsome rivals in this
literature.
The sound engineering on this album seems ideal on my system. We are placed
just a bit on the close side to the stage, but not too much. I get the
sense of sitting in the third or fourth row in a chamber music auditorium.
The orchestra called for in this literature is not large at all, so the
slightly close placement allows us to hear a great deal of detail, while
the impact of the stronger passages is still not too overwhelming. Šparovec does not seem to be miked separately, but rather is meshed into the overall
sound as we would hear it in the live hall. This allows an excellent sense
of dialogue between the clarinet and the orchestra to become vividly
apparent, where recordings with the soloist miked separately too-often lose
some of the soloist-orchestra interplay. (This is especially essential in
the Nielsen Concerto, with the clarinet-snare drum duel.)
With the Odense Symphony Orchestra being the host of the Nielsen
Competition, there is no question that they have a solid understanding of
Nielsen’s unique idiom, and indeed their partnership with Šparovec is
nearly ideal here. The Debussy and Lutosławski also receive performances
that are well-presented and sensitive to their role alongside the soloist.
The Copland, while not quite as vividly stylized as would be the case from
leading American orchestras or some British orchestras, is also
nevertheless given a very sympathetic performance as well.
As for Blaž Šparovec himself, he demonstrates a very fine understanding of
each composer’s unique sound or idiom, and delivers performances that are
both technically polished and very thoughtfully expressive as well. In the
most demanding technical passages that go into the clarinet’s extreme upper
registers, I can detect an ever-so-slight less-refined level of control of
his sound quality than we get from the other clarinetists I mentioned
previously, but honestly, there are probably not very many people who would
even notice, it’s so slight. (Keep in mind that I’m listening to this as a
former clarinetist myself, so I know from the flaws in my own playing what
to listen for in other clarinetists.) Sparovec’s overall sound quality is
ideally characteristic and very enjoyable.
If you do a little shopping around, you can find performances of these
pieces that are just slightly better (and the Martin Fröst recordings are
also on hybrid SACDs with a surround sound layer), but you’ll have to
acquire multiple disks in the process. To find a single album with this
particular set of selections and at this level of excellence, you’ll be
hard-pressed to do better than this one.
I look forward to seeing how Blaž Šparovec’s career progresses. It would
not take much for him to be included in the same company of world-class
clarinetists as the others I mentioned here.
David Phipps
