Synopsis

On today’s date in 1928, Danish composer Carl Nielsen conducted the first public performance of his new Clarinet Concerto in Copenhagen.

“The clarinet can, at one and the same time seem utterly hysterical, gentle as balsam, or as screechy as a streetcar on badly greased rails,” Nielsen said. He set himself the task of covering that whole range of the instrument’s conflicting emotions and colors. He wrote it for a Danish clarinetist he admired, Aage Oxenvad, who played both the public premiere on today’s date and a private reading a few weeks earlier.

After the private performance Oxenvad is supposed to have muttered: “Nielsen must be able to play the clarinet himself — otherwise he would hardly have been able to find all the instrument’s worst notes.” The concerto’s wild mood swings puzzled audiences in 1928, but today it’s regarded as one of Nielsen’s most original works.

In October of 1996, another clarinet concerto received its premiere when American composer John Adams conducted the first performance of his work Gnarly Buttons with soloist Michael Collins. This concerto contains a bittersweet tribute to Adams’ father, a clarinetist who fell victim to Alzheimer’s disease. In Adams’ concerto, the swing tunes slide into dementia, but the concerto ends with a kind of benediction.

Music Played in Today's Program

Carl Nielsen (1865-1931): Clarinet Concerto; Kjell-Inge Stevennson, clarinet; Danish Radio Symphony; Herbert Blomstedt, conductor; EMI 69758

John Adams (b. 1947): Gnarly Buttons; Michael Collins, clarinet; London Sinfonietta; John Adams, conductor; Nonesuch 79453