October 2019 Hot News

VIP Karel Dohnal performs Jean Francaix Clarinet Concerto at Koger Center for the Arts with the USC Symphony Orchestra - Scott Weiss, Conductor

Colin Lawson (Director and Professor at the Royal College of Music - London) Master Class on Historical Instruments at the Cleveland Institute of Music - Senior VIP Franklin Cohen, Host

A special Master Class event and a showing of a Historical Period Clarinet predating the modern instruments like the Boehem System was presented by renowned Colin Larson with brief demonstration of the instrument he brought. Explanations about the early history was discussed, and following this, a master Class with students with a thorough coaching of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. Of interest, the Les Delices Ensemble, which specializes in Period Instrument performance of which Colin Larson is a part of is performing 3 concerts 1 - 3 November in Akron and Cleveland. Information on www.lesdelices.org . Works being played are the Beethoven Quintet for Piano and Winds Op 16 and the Mozart similar Quintet K 452.

Les Délices (in English, The Delights) fosters, educates, and expands audiences for live chamber music on period instruments through dedication to underperformed repertoires in Cleveland, on tour, and through recordings and broadcasts. Critics have described Les Délices’ performances as “a beguiling experience” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) and The New York Times has commented, “Concerts and recordings by Les Délices are journeys of discovery.”

Professor Colin Lawson CBE - Director

Colin read music at Oxford and was subsequently awarded an MA at Birmingham University for his work on the eighteenth-century clarinet. His subsequent doctoral research into the chalumeau in eighteenth-century music (1976; published by UMI in 1981) remains the most extensive study of the instrument and its repertoire. He taught at Aberdeen, Sheffield and London Universities before moving to Thames Valley University as Pro Vice-Chancellor (2001-5). At TVU he was Dean of an arts faculty that contained some 8,000 students, with a curriculum ranging over a wide creative and technological spectrum. In July 2005 he became Director of the Royal College of Music, London, where he holds a Personal Chair in Historical Performance.

Colin has an international profile as a period clarinettist and has played principal in most of Britain's leading period orchestras, notably The Hanover Band, The English Concert and the London Classical Players, with whom he has recorded extensively and toured world-wide. Described recently as 'a brilliant, absolutely world-class player' (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung) and ‘the doyen of period clarinettists’ (BBC Music Magazine), he has appeared as soloist in many international venues, including London's major concert halls and New York's Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. His discography comprises concertos by Fasch, Hook, Mahon, Mozart, Spohr, Telemann, Vivaldi and Weber, as well as a considerable variety of chamber music. Among his most recent recordings are two highly-acclaimed discs of basset horn trios by Mozart and Stadler, and a CD of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet and associated fragments which reached the top 20 in the classical charts.

Colin has published widely on historical performance practice, especially for Cambridge University Press. He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet and author of Cambridge Handbooks to Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet. He is co-editor of a series of Cambridge Handbooks to the Historical Performance of Music, for which he has co-authored an introductory volume (1999) and a book on the early clarinet (2000). He is also editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Orchestra (2003). Most recently he co-edited The Cambridge History of Musical Performance, which appeared in February, 2012.

Colin holds an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Sheffield. He was appointed a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2016 for services to music and music education.

Fredonia Clarinet Quartet Concert with State University of New York at Fredonia Faculty and Alumni and Senior VIP Richard Nunemaker (Bass Clarinet Alumni and member of the Houston Symphony for 40 years)

Senior VIP and Legend Solo Clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic Stanley Drucker in Recital and CD Party at the New York Buffet Showroom

One inspiring evening at the Buffet New York Showroom hosted by Director Laurie Orr with a Performance with legend Senior VIP Stanley Drucker playing the Brahms 2nd Sonata Op 120 and the Bernstein Sonata. Many of the top Clarinetists in New York attended and also took to see the incredible Heritage CD Collection of momumental Soloist performances with the New York Philharmonic with Bernstein and Mehta along with definative performances of Chamber Music and 20th Century Music. The 2nd Edition is Grammy considered and Producer and VIP Jerome Bunke had both Editions on hand to sell to those in attendence, a must have for all clarinetists. These contained cover over 40 years of live on site recorded performances dedicated to Dr Drucker.

Amazing this night is that even at the young age of 90, Drucker is still virtuosity active which should inspire players at all ages not to quit playing but 'Play as if there is no tomorrow'. Below is a clip from ClarinetFest 17 where this aspect is explained by 3 Super Senior VIP Players, Stanley Drucker, Michele Zukovsky, and Eddie Daniels, and why they stand by these attributes.

Official results - Senior Soloists
XV International Clarinet Competition “Saverio Mercadante”
17-20 ottobre 2019, Noci (Bari)

1st Prize
not assigned
2nd Prize
Ricardo Bérna Torá (Spain)
3rd Prize ex-aequo
Giuseppe Dugo (Italy) - Catarina Angela Pereira (Portugal)

Roeland Hendrikx Master Class at the Juilliard Shool - Senior VIP Charles Neidich, Host

Inaugural Performance of the Fredonia Clarinet Quartet at SUNY Fredonia featuring Clarinet Faculty and Alumni Senior VIP Richard Nunemaker

The Fredonia Clarinet Quartet gave a premiere performance of the ensemble on October 8, 2019 at SUNY Fredonia. The quartet is made up of Andrew Seigel, Elizabeth Hanlon and I-Fei Chen (all members of the clarinet faculty at Fredonia) and Richard Nunemaker a 1964 graduate from SUNY Fredonia and retired member of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. The program featured works by Houston composer Robert Nelson, Austin composer Dan Welcher, William O. Smith, Marc Mellits and Jorge Montilla. This program will be repeated on October 26th for the St. Francis of Assisi Concert Series in Tonawanda, NY.

Yu-Ting Cheng (Student of VIP Alan Kay) and Maestro Michael Morgan and the SUNY Stony Brook University Symphony Orchestra perform John Corigliano Clarinet Concerto as part of her DMA Recital

The members of an important American chamber ensemble will be recognized by the Eastman School of Music, and for several of the members it will truly be a homecoming. The Trio was formed by Senior VIP Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr and Walter and Sylvia Roederer

On Saturday, October 5, during Eastman’s alumni weekend, the members of the Verdehr Trio will be special guests at a Morning Chamber Music concert, where they’ll be presented by Dean Jamal Rossi with the school’s Luminary Award, given to “individuals who have given extraordinary service to music and the arts at the national and local levels.”

The description certainly fits the members of the Verdehr Trio, who have created a vast repertoire of 20^th and 21^st century works for its chosen medium: a trio of violin, clarinet, and piano (with variations).

Clarinetist and Eastman alumna Elsa Verdehr ’58E (MM), ’64E (DMA), and her husband, violinist Walter Verdehr, founded the Verdehr Trio in 1972. The Yugoslavian-born Walter was the first violinist to graduate with a DMA from Juilliard. Elsa and Walter ended up at Michigan State University as colleagues and, in 1971, as husband and wife.

The Verdehrs saw a need for a more robust performing repertoire for a specific chamber ensemble: the violin-clarinet-piano trio, whose small repertoire included pieces by Bartók, Milhaud, Khachaturian, and a few other composers. “There were only about seven pieces that were good, and they were really good,” says Elsa. “But we could not keep playing the same music over and over. We needed to open new paths of the repertoire.” So the trio started an ambitious program of commissioning new works.

Starting with commissions to two Pulitzer Prize-winning composers, Karel Husa and Leslie Bassett, the Verdehr Trio’s programs soon included substantial new chamber works by Ned Rorem, Jennifer Higdon, William Bolcom, and many other prominent composers, as well as a number of double and triple concertos. Ten Pulitzer winners are represented, as well as composers from England, France, Spain, Brazil, and Australia. Some Eastman composers are on the list too: current composition department chair David Liptak ‘75E (MM), ‘76E (DMA) and alumni Katherine Hoover ‘59E and Kevin Puts ‘94E, ‘99E (DMA).

The Verdehrs estimate this has added up to about 225 commissions, including the trios by Alexander Ariutunian and Gian Carlo Menotti that will be performed at Eastman on October 5, which she calls “two of the best we’ve commissioned.”

“I give Walter full credit for this,” she adds. “He approached the composers and arranged funding and grants.”

“In the seventies, eighties, and even the nineties,” says Walter, “the process was not so codified. We would often go to composers who were not yet well known and who would be glad to write for us.” Instead of paying large fees to these composers, the Verdehrs promised to play their music repeatedly – and they kept their promise.

The Verdehrs’ remarkable concert career has taken them not only to prominent venues in New York City and Washington, but across the country and throughout Europe, Asia, and Australia. Elsa and Walter are currently involved in a five-year project that will including writing a memoir and organizing all the information about the works they have commissioned and performed.

Many of these pieces were published and recorded – Walter estimates they’ve made 28 CDs for Crystal Records, with two more still being prepared – and included in a video series called The Making of a Medium. For their creation and promotion of this music, the Verdehr Trio received a Creative Programming Award from Chamber Music America and an Adventuresome Programming Award from ASCAP and Chamber Music America. Elsa says she’s “incredibly honored and delighted” to be returning to Eastman to add the Luminary Award to this list.

“It was my home for four years,” says Elsa of Eastman, where she studied with the legendary Stanley Hasty: “a wonderful teacher; anybody else who studied with him will say that.”

Her happiest memories of Eastman include performing in the Philharmonia under Howard Hanson, and concerts and recordings with the Eastman Wind Ensemble (EWE) under Frederick Fennell; two of her fellow EWE clarinetists went on to prominence, Peter Hadcock with the Boston Symphony and Larry Combs with the Chicago Symphony (both ‘61E).

In nearly five decades of existence, from 1972 to 2015, the Verdehr Trio has had only three pianists, all of them Eastman graduates: David Renner ’60E, ’65E (MM), Gary Kirkpatrick ’62E, and Sylvia Roederer ’80E. All four alumni, along with Walter, will be returning to Eastman for the Luminary Award, and a concert featuring faculty members Renée Jolles (violin), Michael Wayne (clarinet), and Andrew Harley (piano).

“I hope it’s not immodest to say that I think we’ve made a real impact on the musical world,” says Elsa, to which Walter adds, “We just wanted to create and perform as many good works as possible.”

Excerpts from the Verdehr Trio’s Making of a Medium video series are available on YouTube. They include complete performances and interviews by Walter with the composers. Here are two for the works to be performed on October 5 at Eastman: