LF 26: Mozart and Macmillan Clarinet Quintets
Crichton Collegiate Church, 20/9/26
Maxwell Quartet, Maximiliano Martin (clarinet)
The morning of 20th September saw the Maxwell Quartet return to the Lammermuir Festival with an eclectic programme of Prokofiev, MacMillan and Mozart. They were joined by Spanish clarinettist (SCO principal) Maximiliano Martin for clarinet quintets by MacMillan and Mozart, preceded by Prokofiev’s Second String Quartet. As to their celebrated Scottish folk arrangements promised by the publicity, ‘new’ leader Max Baillie said, “We’ll have to see about that”. The venue was the secluded Crichton Collegiate Church.
Prokofiev’s String Quartet No 2 in F major Op 92 is a 3-movement work, though the slow second movement incorporates a central scherzo. It is heavily influenced by Kabardian folk music from the North Caucasus region to where Prokofiev and other creatives were evacuated during the Second World War. The first movement’s sauntering metre incorporates three such characterful melodies, all confident and positive in mood, within a sonata form and Prokofiev’s unmistakable musical language, driven by motor rhythms. All instruments play in the treble clef for an achingly beautiful Kabardian lovesong melody in A minor for the first part of the second movement. The pace picks up for a delightfully playful seductive dance in D major, followed by a slightly slower fluid passage, seeming to swoon at its own beauty, emulating the sound of the kamacheh, a bowed stringed instrument of Persian origin still found through Iran, the Caucasus, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. When we return to the A-minor lovesong, the mood is darker and wistful and the music ends on a chord of E-minor. The wildly episodic finale is even more driven than the first movement and is a pot-pourri of energetic exhibitionist folk-dances, punctuated by a cello cadenza and a melancholy song, managing to finish on a chord of F-major. An immensely appealing (and technically demanding) work received a charismatic and convincing performance. What’s not to like?
James MacMillan’s ‘Tuireadh’ (lament) for clarinet and string quartet is dedicated to the victims of the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster and their families, written as a companion piece to the Sue Jane Taylor memorial sculpture in Aberdeen, unveiled in 1991. A memorial service was held on a vessel at the North Sea location of the catastrophic oil-and-gas platform fire, where 167 men were lost. One of the family members present, the mother of one of the men who had perished, wrote to MacMillan, describing how a spontaneous keening sound had risen from the mourners assembled on the boat. That sound and other traditional Scottish forms of lament are to be found in the music. That much I gleaned from the programme notes. Whilst the elegiac intent was evident, I found much of the music quite impenetrable. The clarinet cut a solitary figure, for the most part. Microtone beats evoked the sound of seagulls, and white noises suggested the scrambling of shingle at a shoreline, though whether that was intended I cannot say.
Mozart Clarinet Quintet in A major K581 is the sunniest of A-major pieces and, with stiff autumnal breezes outside (and blowing around the church when a door was opened), it seemed to revive the Scottish summer, as congenial chamber playing wove its magic in the first movement. A slight relaxation of tempo on the second subject allowed the first violin’s major key sigh of contentment and the clarinet’s minor key response to hold the moment before they took flight together, the phrasing exquisite. The elegantly contrapuntal development, based solely on the second phrase of the first subject, allowed all five players to shine through the idyllic texture. In the D-major Larghetto slow movement, all strings but the cello were muted, Duncan Strachan achieving the same dynamic without loss of tone quality entirely through control of bow pressure – the resulting ensemble tone was very pleasing. The dolce return of the main theme at the end was exquisite. The lilting minuet, back in A-major, was lyrical and charming. The first of the two Trios, for strings only with a frisson of anxiety in A-minor, was like a cloud shadow falling on the garden; but after a reprise of the minuet’s elegance, the second Trio restored the sunshine with more than a hint of Austrian schmaltz. The finale, a tripping Allegretto with 6 characterful variations, received commensurately characterful playing from (in turn) clarinet, first violin, viola (I call it the ‘Eeyore Variation’: disconsolate moping), clarinet in violin in a scampering duel, clarinet and violin in an Adagio schmoozy romance, and finally all in for a sunny Allegro coda. Delightful chamber music at its best.
And we did finally get a folk arrangement, for clarinet quintet, as an encore: a tune by Irish accordionist Séamus Begley. Charming.
Weblink: https://www.lammermuirfestival.co.uk/event/mozart-and-macmillan-clarinet-quintets/