The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation presents “Naumburg Looks Back”: Charles Neidich, 1985 Clarinet Award in Review
Mohamed Shams, piano; Eduardo Leandro, percussion
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY
January 30, 2023
Is there any sound Charles Neidich can not make on the clarinet? If so, I have yet to know about it. I have reviewed the legendary clarinetist many times in these pages, always with the greatest pleasure, in the context of his groundbreaking Wa concert series in the Tenri gallery space in Greenwich Village (complete with a gourmet dinner, catered by his wife, Ayako Oshima); but this is the first time I have seen him in a more formal hall.
Mr. Neidich announced (in sometimes redundant verbal program notes) that not only was the Naumburg series titled “looks back,” but that one should also regard his artistry as perpetually “looking forward”- which is sage advice for all artists. Mr. Neidich has the mellow songfulness of decades of experience, but his youthful inquisitiveness informs his choices every bit as much.
There was a subtle thread of anti-Semitic persecution linking all the works on the first half. The recital began with Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Clarinet Sonata, Op. 28, written at the end of World War II in 1945. Weinberg, once mentioned in the same reverential tones as Shostakovich and Prokofiev, was subsequently banned, and written out of Soviet music history. Bringing his substantial oeuvre to the public’s attention has been slow and difficult. Even his close friend and colleague Shostakovich couldn’t prevail on the authorities to let him out of prison (for “Jewish bourgeois nationalism”). Only Stalin’s death in 1953 saved him from certain execution (as had befallen other members of his family). Mr. Neidich likens the work to pages from a diary, a common enough “coded” musical practice in the Soviet era. The sonata begins with an ambling Allegro “as though one were going for a walk to buy some milk” and each movement slows down, with Jewish laments and mounting terror assuming center stage. This “universal prayer for humanity” was given the masterly Neidich treatment, and I must mention one clarinet leitmotif that characterizes his playing: the gorgeous, seemingly infinite qualities of his final notes, whether of a movement or a whole piece. They seem to hover in the air beyond what any mere mortal could achieve.
Ursula Mamlok, the puckish composition guru at Manhattan School of Music for 45 (!) years, had the “good fortune” (one feels strange calling it that) to escape Berlin with her family in 1938, directly the result of Kristallnacht, first to Ecuador, then the United States. Rückblick (In Erinnerung an die Reichspogromnacht 9.Nov.1938) (2002) was originally conceived for alto saxophone (or clarinet or bass-clarinet) and piano. It is the only direct reference in her vast works list to the Holocaust. What I took away from the superb performance was the sheer economy of her four mini-elegies, conveying in a few minutes what another composer might have turned into a gigantic symphony.
The Mendelssohn F major violin sonata, abandoned by the composer in 1838 as a “wretched sonata,” was discovered and revised by violinist Yehudi Menuhin in 1953, Violinists have been grateful for another Mendelssohn violin sonata besides the F Minor, Op. 4. And now, will other clarinetists dare to take up the Neidich clarinet transformation? Honestly, although the work has all the beloved hallmarks of the composer, especially the “elfin” scurrying of the Finale, so reminiscent of Carl Maria von Weber’s Moto perpetuo, I don’t think the work is really top-drawer Mendelssohn, and that if he himself had continued working on it, it may have ended up with more complexity, especially in terms of contrapuntal development. No matter, the two players sparkled. Mendelssohn’s connection to the “theme” I detected for this half: grandson of the Jewish Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Felix and his siblings converted to Protestantism in that earlier period of anti-Semitism, then his posthumous reputation endured smearing by Wagner, as well as being purged from German concert life by the Nazis, in favor of Schumann.
At this juncture, I must devote a special paragraph to Mr. Neidich’s long-time collaborator, pianist Mohamed Shams, a perfect partner if ever there was one. There is nothing he cannot do, he possesses what I call the “quiet virtuosity” that only those in the know realize is happening, solving every potential issue before it occurs, perfection of balance, phrasing, and unity with the soloist. Simply amazing. One little quibble, at times I felt he was being overly deferential, he could have let the piano roar a little more (the lid was up).
The “persecution” theme followed into the second half with Edison Denisov, who composed largely under the Darmstadt spell: the aesthetic of Boulez and Stockhausen, who felt that all music that was not serial was beneath contempt. Denisov too was blacklisted by Soviet bureaucrats in 1979. His cosmopolitanism enabled him to get influential Western-European contemporary music to his students behind the Iron Curtain. There is a later added subtitle to Denisov’s Ode for clarinet, piano, and percussion (1968)- Mr. Neidich explained, not found on the autograph or any published version,“in memory of Che Guevara.” The work required Mr. Shams to play inside the piano, brushing and plucking strings. Percussionist Eduardo Leandro was masterfully sensitive, particularly in the chimes that got softer and softer. Mr. Neidich revealed the drama in his improvisatory flights (Denisov had been forced to write “one” way to play it by his publishers), the first time I’m sure New York has ever heard the work as intended.
Now Neidich the composer comes to our attention, with a recent (2023) reworking of his Icarus Ascending. Bear in mind that 2023 is only 30 days old! He uses the advanced techniques of microtones and multiphonics in his already huge palette. One sensed the soaring, questing of the disobedient son, but I do take issue with his conclusion that Icarus rises again, which for me removes the tragedy.
I will admit that I have never heard a note of Julia Perry’s music live in concert. This is almost unfathomable, as she was prolific and gifted. (She also attended my first undergraduate school, Westminster Choir College.). Serenity (1972) was originally written for oboe, then clarinet by the composer. Despite her health woes (paralyzed by stroke), Ms. Perry still believed in music’s healing power. The piece was offered as a sort of balm and mood-shift prior to the concluding work.
Although Brahms had virtually renounced composition, a chance meeting with the Meiningen orchestra clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld unlocked his heart as well as his desire to compose, resulting in the masterpieces: Clarinet Trio, Clarinet Quintet, and the two sonatas Op. 120. Signs of the misanthropic, gruff Brahms’s flirtatiousness (non-sensual of course, but collegial) were visible in his nicknaming Richard “Fraülein” Mühlfeld. His clarinet ability revealed to Brahms new horizons in sonority, in Brahms’s beloved middle and low registers that he had always favored in his vocal writing. The two Opus 120 sonatas were composed at the same time, and they do have a valedictory feeling: the obsession with Bach chorales, the advanced, compressed compositional devices, fearless dissonance (usually experienced as passing tones or suspensions). At times during the E-flat, the more serene of the two, the writing seems to be noodling around between the two players (again the superb Mr. Shams on piano), and neither is really dominant, it’s like a private conversation to which we have been invited to eavesdrop.
The ovation was tumultuous, and so richly deserved. Therefore, Mr. Neidich said the only possible encore was the Andante un poco Adagio (second movement) of the other Op. 120 sonata, the F minor. A healing balm, a sharing, what Mr. Neidich stressed was the “communal” aspect of music making, the infinity symbol of energy that passes from the artist to the listener and back and forth.
All of us will keep “looking forward” to more Neidich!
