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Tempo

With ‘Bass Clarinet and Friends — a miscellany’, Ian Mitchell presents an ambitious exploration of chamber works featuring this versatile and underrepresented member of the woodwind family. This double disc, released in September 2018, features music spanning from 1932-2017 and is the product of years of work on the part of Mitchell and his ensemble Gemini on championing and expanding chamber repertoire which features the bass clarinet in an integral role. If there is a need for a lesson in working with bass clarinet in small ensemble settings, this release is invaluable.

The challenge in reviewing a release like this lies squarely in its nature as a ‘Miscellany’: a mixture of different things. The collection of tracks presented as two ‘sets’ is deliberately far reaching and includes composers whose styles vary enormously. Any single shared musicological thread is difficult to pull out although there are several important strands (including relationships with jazz, experimentalism and, perhaps most importantly, the use of registral space) but I’ll come to these later. The one element that truly links all the works on this disc is Mitchell himself.

Ian Mitchell took over as director of Gemini from its founder Peter Wiegold in 1985/6 and in doing so became responsible for a glowing commissioning record and close relationships with several composers. Mitchell explains in the liner notes that he was first introduced to the bass clarinet when Alan Hacker, of whom he was a pupil at the RAM, played him an LP of Eric Dolphy’s rendition of God Bless the Child. This introduction to the unaccompanied bass clarinet was the beginning of a search for repertoire that has continued throughout Mitchell’s life. The journey has resulted in six discs so far, including a recording of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Ave Maris Stella with Gemini released in 2008, and a solo disc, ‘The Edge of the World’, released on Black Box in 2000. Mitchell has gradually been building a diverse body of works which feature the bass clarinet in small ensemble, duo and solo settings. Following on from Gemini’s 2017 CD of music by David Lumsdaine and Nicola LeFanu, Bass Clarinet and Friends offers a new perspective: unashamed revelling in juxtaposed styles at the centre of which sits the bass clarinet.

Edwin York Bowen’s Phantasy Quintet (1932) and Jonathan Harvey’s The Riot (1993) are the opening and closing tracks of the collection, and they demonstrate at once the stylistic gulfs that exist between the works included. The two offer entirely different settings for the bass clarinet, and the performances (on these two tracks and throughout the disc) are immaculate. York Bowen’s Phantasy Quintet sets the tone, with long reaching lines and lyrical (almost Rachmaninoff-esque) romanticism, hints of which can be heard again later in the disc albeit in disguise. Mitchell suggests in the liner notes that this work may have been the only one in existence for bass clarinet and string quartet when it was written. It is perhaps, then, a work that was experimental for its time at least in conception. At the other end of the collection Jonathan Harvey’s The Riot offers an explosion of colour, pressing urgency, and an intricacy of instrumental interplay which almost never lets up throughout the ten minutes of the recording. The piece is a network of motives thrown around and juxtaposed, each idea living in its own harmonic sphere. Registral space is important too; each instrument is carefully set within its own vertical space, collisions occur when that space is infringed on and Riot ensues. This churning soundworld of sudden twists, unexplored corners and occasional bursts of tonality is highly virtuosic and presents a challenge that is risen to by Mitchell’s colleagues Ileana Ruhemann (flute /piccolo) and Aleksander Szram (piano).

Following on from the work by York Bowen on the first disc is William 0. Smith’s Jazz Set for two bass clarinets (2012). Smith has written a number of works with this title including pieces for violin and wind quintet (1991) and clarinet and bass clarinet (1992). The composer regularly goes by two different names to separate his creative output: when playing jazz, he is Bill Smith, and he played with pianist Dave Brubeck until the early 2000s. In his classical work, he goes by William 0. Smith, and in this vein he has studied with Darius Milhaud and Roger Sessions. In the present work, we find a meeting point between jazz and contemporary classical music and the exciting melding of techniques from both worlds.

One work that does, at least to my ears, occupy a space in the gap between York Bowen and Harvey is Sadie Harrison’s Owl of the Hazels (Lazdynn Peleda) which closes the first disc. The piece draws on traditional Lithuanian songs of a bride’s journey and is split into two movements. It was premiered by Ian Mitchell and Tim Jones in 2005 and has obviously stuck with them since Owl of the Hazels is a work which combines virtuosity and immediacy of sound with lyrical expressiveness, juxtaposing harmonic worlds and short jumping gestures with elongated mesmerising clarinet solos. The only shame is the break in the recording between movements I and II which are intended to be linked by a single held D in the bass clarinet; a reminder that there is nothing quite like a live performance.

The second disc begins with Dave Smith’s playful Aragonesca inspired by the Cuban band, Orquesta Aragon. A nice choice for the opening of the second ‘set’ as Mitchell calls it. This is followed by Huw Watkins’ Double for bass clarinet, cello and piano, which offers a reminder of the lyricism heard earlier in York Bowen’s Phantasy. Watkins takes this lyricism in a new direction led by his approach to the Baroque dance structure from which the piece takes its name. John White’s Concertino for bass clarinet and string trio (1996) similarly takes an old structure in a new direction. White, perhaps best known as part of the English school of experimentalism (and for his Drinking and Hooting Machine), is an eclectic in terms of influences and language. That eclecticism comes through in his Concertino, which bubbles with energy and an identity of its own.

Finally (and most recently) there are two works for bass clarinet and mezzo-soprano, both completed in 2017 and first performed by Alison Wells and Ian Mitchell. True to the spirit of this Miscellany, the two works — written by Helen Roe and Cheryl Frances-Hoad — could not be more different. Roe’s Birds, Earth, Sun, Sky and Water sets two poems by Katherine Mansfield and is a slow exploration of the shared sonic space of the voice and bass clarinet. The two performers follow long unfolding lines through harmonies that never quite resolve. The lines are entwined with the bass clarinet seemingly illustrating the emotional content of the words. Cheryl Frances-Hoad sets text from Cicero’s How to Win an Election, translated by Philip Freeman. For such an ancient text, the relevance to the current situation is stark and sad. Musically speaking, Frances-Hoad creates a tight partnership between bass clarinet and voice; the resultant drama is as much to do with careful use of both instruments as with the heightened and damning nature of the text. The screeching final line of the work with its growling bass clarinet and sudden refusal to say more is a far cry from anything else on this disc. These two works are exemplary of the importance of performer—composer collaborations and of how much Mitchell and Gemini have achieved so far.

Finally to the question of what it means to create ‘a miscellany’. By Mitchell’s own admission this disc is a mixing pot of styles which came about partly by virtue of the selection of composers they had worked with in the past plus the urge to share that music with a wider audience. This results in a collection that feels somewhat scattered and perhaps sacrifices a level of curation in favour of documentation. Having said that, attention has clearly gone into balancing the two sets to some degree. This double disc is a kind of curated mixing pot which perhaps won’t always be played from beginning to end in the traditional album sense, but which was possibly always intended to serve a slightly different purpose; collecting together rather than guiding through. The discs offer a window into the world of the bass clarinet, creating a welcome space for the instrument to show its many varied colours.