St Mary Lamberhurst, Friday 23 March 2018
It is easy to overlook the fact that the clarinet is a recent addition to the range of musical instruments in terms of the history of music. For Mozart it was a novelty which he happily endorsed and for which he wrote many magnificent works – one of them represented here. Emma Johnson, accompanied by Gregory Drott, opened her recital with an arrangement of the final movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet – and a very fine start it made. From there we were quickly transported to the romantic period, though Saint-Saens’ Clarinet Sonata in E flat Op167 is something of an oddity. The composer had such a long life that this late work was written in 1920, though its sound world is redolent of the mid nineteenth century. The opening movement is whimsical if not actually melancholic leading to a warmer Allegro animato. The third movement is the most striking, being almost an arrangement for clarinet and piano of a composition for Cavaille-Coll organ!
By comparison Schumann’s Fantasiestuck Op73 are lighter in texture and carry the listener with ease.
The second half brought us firmly into the twentieth century with Bernstein’s early Clarinet Sonata and three brief pieces by Stravinsky. Perhaps the most pleasing piece, however, was the suite arranged from music by Paul Reade written for Emma Johnson as incidental music for the TV series The Victorian Kitchen Garden. Throughout, Emma Johnson had introduced each work and maintained a gentle intimacy with her audience, despite the need to move from one side of the central pillar to another.
The church was full, despite a miserably damp evening, on this the first event in this year’s Lamberhurst Music Festival. The next concert brings the Ferio Saxophone Quartet on Friday 25th May.