Album Notes

All participants in this first clarinet ensemble in Russia are engaged in the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra and thus the quality of the performance is guaranteed as in the illustrious music of the orchestra. This album can be considered a 'record' of the first year of the group's existence. There are works by four contemporary composers of the twentieth century, written mainly for wind instruments. The piece by Eugene Bozza, has earned global fame largely through his chamber music, including the clarinet, achieving a "polyphonic' sound: full of life melodies replaced by the melancholic and deep intonations of the bass clarinet.

The Uruguayan composer, Beatrice Lockhart, has written numerous tango pieces: for piano solo and for wind instruments. The participants of the Clarinet Club" chose her "Venezuelan rural sketches", for which she claimed the "National Prize of Caracas". Composer Michael Kibbe, known mainly at home in America, basically specializes in music for woodwind instruments such as bassoon, flute and the oboe, but in the interpretation by the Clarinet Club, his "Ebony Suite" comes out as if designed uniquely for clarinets. The musicians masterfully find intonation: it seems as if the flute is weeping, followed swiftly by the laughs of the bassoon- but all this diversity of sound is created by the clarinets alone. As a whole, after listening to these pieces, one compares it with a spring stream, where the rippling of the water murges with the turbulence of a river.
Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, № 151, August 15, 2008
© Polina VINOGRADOVA