Robert Plane’s Elsewhere: Commissions for Clarinet

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From Troy Public Radio and the John M. Long School of Music at Troy University,
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I'm Tim Phillips, and you're listening to Clarinet Corner. Today on the show,
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we'll be listening to tracks from a new CD called Elsewhere: Commissions
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for Clarinet, Volume 2, and the clarinetist is someone
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who is not new to Clarinet Corner
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listeners, because I've played his recordings on this show for years.
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He has so many CDs, and they're all so good. And he's
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one of my favorite clarinetists. He's a British clarinetist named Robert Plane.
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Rob, thank you for being with us on the show today. Oh, it's a real
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pleasure. It's lovely to chat to you. As I was going through your
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resume, I see that you're the head of woodwind performance
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at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, UK,
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in Wales. And for my listeners
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who are in Alabama and maybe have never been there or don't know
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the proximity of the UK, I've I did MapQuest
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just to see how far away you are from London. And it's only about a
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3-hour drive. Indeed, yes. I mean,
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it's under 2 hours on the train, basically heading west
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from London. And I'm in Cardiff, which is just tucked
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over the border from England into Wales. And I've
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lived here for 27 years now. Well, it's a beautiful place.
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I've seen pictures. If I were to come visit you there,
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what would you tell me to do? Other than listen to you play the clarinet,
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which I would definitely listen to you play. Well, I mean, it's an incredibly culturally
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vibrant city. So you could go to hear Welsh
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National Opera. They're opening their season this year
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with Stravinsky's Oedipus
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Rex and Bluebeard's Castle.
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Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, yes. Or you could hear the BBC National
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Orchestra of Wales in concert. You'd certainly have to visit
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Cardiff Castle. Wales does castles really,
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really well. And you could stroll around Cardiff
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Bay, which is the old docks of the city,
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which has been turned into a sort of leisure and cafe
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area. So you're right on the waterfront, looking out west from
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Wales. That's beautiful. I'm just imagining it. I want to go someday.
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I think it would be cool. So, you work there,
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you've lived there for a long time, and I know that you're an active
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musician in the area. I've seen pictures on Facebook of you
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performing, like, concerts outside, and just all over
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the place all the time, which I love, and I can definitely connect with that
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as an Alabama clarinetist, too. But you've also been a soloist
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with many orchestras, and you've played concertos from Mozart's Concerto
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to your famous recording of the Finzi Clarinet Concerto, and you
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even performed at the BBC Proms as a soloist. At the Royal Albert
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Hall in 2011. Was that like a huge
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peak for you of your career? Because that is a huge
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deal in England. Yes,
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it was a huge privilege. And in fact, the piece that I
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played was a double concerto for clarinet and flugelhorn,
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which sounds like a strange combination, but actually really works.
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It was by Simon Holt. And it's an amazingly dramatic
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piece. And Yeah, I mean, it's certainly unusual to play in
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such a cavernous space. I mean, it is a huge,
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huge concert hall. So yeah, it was
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a real thrill, and to be honest, every time I stand up
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in front of the orchestra, it always feels that kind of privilege.
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It's funny you mentioned the Finzi because just last
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Saturday night I was playing at a concert in London with
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the orchestra called Sinfonia Smith Square in
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London, and it was a 70th anniversary celebration
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or marking of the death of Finzi. So I was
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really thrilled to come back to that piece. I mean, it was a piece
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I recorded when I was pretty young. I was in my sort
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of mid to late 20s, so it was, you know, it was over
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30 years ago. So it's You know,
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one of the— well, perhaps the only good thing about aging
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is the sort of greater wisdom that you can bring to your music
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making, I think. So it's been— the Finzi's been a piece which has
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been with me a long time, and I've just absolutely loved
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every second I've spent playing it. Yeah, it's a very deep
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piece, and it has a lot of possibilities and a lot of expression and
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a lot of complexity. Your recording brings out so much there.
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I love it so much. So yeah, you've done so many things. And I was
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looking at your website today. And I saw that you have 40
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solo and chamber CDs,
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along with other things. I think that's correct. I mean, that's huge.
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That's— you work a lot. And you play a
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lot. And you record a lot. And the level is quite high.
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So what keeps you going? Well, I mean,
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a lot of the recordings, I mean, not all of them, I've been lucky enough
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to record lots of the classic repertoire, everything from Brahms
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Trio, Weber Quintet, Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time.
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But one sort of strand of my career has been resurrecting
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English and British music more widely.
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That sort of period for the first half of the 20th century of
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British music. So the Finzi, for example, that we talked about,
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but composers like Herbert Howells and York Bowen,
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Sir Arnold Bax. That English music has
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been a real passion for me my whole career.
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So you'll have seen that within that
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discography there's a sizable chunk of recording
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that is bringing this music back to life. I mean,
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often in premiere recordings,
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sometimes the pieces have never been played or, you know, haven't been played
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for 100 years. So It's just music
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that's connected with me really strongly for a very,
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very long time. And obviously recording is the
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best way to get that music known, and especially these days
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when the music is so easily accessible.
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So it's something I love to do, and I feel like
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I'm sort of on a quest, really. I was, I mean, hugely lucky
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to study with Thea King, who in the UK
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was an incredibly highly regarded musician,
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clarinetist, and she, she made
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her name really exploring this similar English repertoire.
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And in— during my 3 years of studying with her, I became closer
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and closer to this music. And yeah, in a way, I feel
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like I've tried to kind of carry on her legacy in the best
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way I can. Well, as is very typical, I have a student working
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now on the Finzi Five Bagatelles for clarinet piano.
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And when I have students doing that, usually it's their first time playing a British
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clarinet solo. And I tried to talk to them about some
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of the qualities of British music that they might look for.
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And I wonder what your thoughts are on that, since you've had so much experience
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with lots of different types of British music. What would you tell a student
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who's looking at British music for the first time? Like, what would you look for
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in there? I mean, in some ways, this would be the same advice with
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any piece, but I think it's especially just to dig right inside the
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harmony. It's the harmony that makes
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it British. I mean, the Finzi Bagatelles are so full of suspensions,
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it's so yearning, it's so romantic and also
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folksy. I mean, it's got that basis in
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folk song and I think that's the kind of fundamental
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appeal really. I think it goes back to something very fundamental
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inside us, linking into modes and the folk
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songs that we used to sing. So I think there's
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a kind of naivety, there's an innocence about it and a kind of
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simplicity. I mean, that's generalizing obviously,
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but yeah, I would say certainly as a clarinetist
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to have a go at playing the piano part and just
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really get inside the sumptuous harmony. Because those
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Bagatelles are very light pieces. In many ways they're like little
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trifles, but when you start to really dig down,
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the harmony's just exquisite and the
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writing between clarinet and piano is so clever.
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So yeah, I think as deep an immersion
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just into the sound world— I mean, I guess that's where
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the sort of clarinet school, the rich sort
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of almost vibrato sound of British clarinet playing,
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slightly of yesteryear but still to a certain extent.
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You know, it's all developed in partnership with these pieces, I think. So, you know,
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the way we play is inherently connected
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to the way these composers wrote. Wow, that's great advice
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and I appreciate it. We're going to jump into this CD now,
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Elsewhere: Commissions for Clarinet Volume 2, which means you know these
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composers and you asked them to write these pieces, correct?
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Yes, I mean, in almost all cases, and I do qualify it
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on the notes by saying pieces I'd either commissioned or
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premiered. I mean, there's quite an interesting story because Judith Bingham,
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she has 3 works on this disc.
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And in fact, she had written a piano trio for my wife's
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trio, which is the Gould Piano Trio, which features on this disc.
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So I'd sort of known of Judith a long time but had never met her.
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But the clarinet concerto that she wrote was actually written
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for Michael Collins. He was meant
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to be playing it at a festival in Kent in in southern England,
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and he had an accident and broke his wrist. So I
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got quite a late phone call saying, would I possibly
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be able to cover this concerto? And I mean,
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I was thrilled to do it, but also the other interesting thing about that piece
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is that 2 of the movements are on E-flat clarinet, which is not
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normally a part of my armoury. I mean, I do play it and I have
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played it, but it took quite a lot of brushing up.
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So I had a really exciting sort of run-in into that piece.
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And even though it wasn't meant to be me premiering it, the happy
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sort of result of this is that Judith then immediately said that she wanted to
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write a clarinet quintet for me. So it was a
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bit of luck, stroke of fortune, but it's ended
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up with the quintet of a really exquisite addition
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to the repertoire, I think. It really is. It's a lovely work. And we'll listen
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to the first movement now, this piece is called Elsewhere for clarinet
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string quartet by Judith Bingham, and the first movement is La Primavera.
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That was La Primavera, the first movement of Elsewhere, a work
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for clarinet and string quartet by Judith Bingen with Robert Plane,
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clarinet, and the Elias String Quartet. And it comes from his
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new CD called Elsewhere: Commissions for Clarinet, Volume 2,
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music by British composers. The next thing that we'll listen to is
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by Sally Beamish, and it's called Tom's Turn. Tell me about Sally.
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Yes, well, Sally started her career as a viola
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player, a very distinguished viola player, and gradually turn
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to composition. Part of that process was actually her
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moving to Scotland, living very remotely in
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Scotland, which is quite a feature for a number of British composers,
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including Piers Helliwell, who's on this disc as well. So she
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is inspired by landscape.
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This Tom's Turn has got quite an interesting history.
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It's a very early piece of hers, but she did write
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this for me, and I premiered it
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at the Chester Festival in a version just for solo clarinet,
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but she was so taken by her own theme that later
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she incorporated it in her trumpet concerto, but she
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included it in canon as a duet in that piece.
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And I got in touch with Sally when I said I wanted to record
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her piece and said, you know, it'd be really cool to replicate
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that idea of the canon, the duet,
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but with 2— for 2 clarinets.
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Instead. And she went away and sort
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of worked at it, and basically she's fitted the piece together,
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and I multitracked it on this recording.
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And I think it's a really thrilling addition. So, you know,
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you could play it as a version for 2 different clarinet
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players, or in theory you could play it alongside your own Uh,
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recording of one of the lines. Well, I got to tell you, the first time
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I listened to this, I was like, oh, there's another clarinetist on here. Who is
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it? And I was looking at the, um, at the list of people playing,
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and there's no other clarinetist. I'm like, oh, he recorded himself.
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And I tell you what, it was a really, really difficult thing to do.
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So I was basically in the recording studio with, uh, you know, I laid
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down one of the lines, recorded that, and— but obviously the
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editing possibilities are not huge for this kind of thing. So, you know,
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I really had to to nail it and then have
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that track played back through the headphones and then basically duet
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with myself. Yeah, it's hard because when you play, we have
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expression and we have rubato and we have all these things. And when you play
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with a recording of yourself, you kind of have to follow that. And it helps
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to not do so much rubato. Yeah, it's diff— it's a difficult
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thing for sure. Yeah. And also this piece is full of accelerandos.
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It's not like the tempo stays the same all the time. So it was
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a real challenge. Challenge, um, of listening and, and actually ensemble
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playing. It's just that it happened to be, you know, playing alongside something fixed,
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and, and you have this slightly odd sensation of,
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of having to listen to yourself through the headphones while you're playing. Wow.
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Well, let's take a listen. This is Tom's Turn by Sally Beamish with 2
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Robert Planes.
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That was Robert Plane playing both clarinet parts in a work called Tom's Turn
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by Sally Beamish. Today we're listening to tracks from a CD called Elsewhere:
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Commissions for Clarinet, Volume And the next work we're going
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to listen to is a little unusual because it has
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a tenor, but he's kind of speaking most
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of the time. And then you have a clarinet and it tells a story.
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It's by Judith Bingham. It's called Hodge, Dr. Johnson's Cat.
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So tell me about this, Rob. Well,
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Judith was inspired here by the writing of Dr.
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Samuel Johnson. And his first dictionary
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published in the English language. And the
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work, it's a sort of a— I mean, it's a comedy duo
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act in many ways, and it explores the character
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of Dr. Johnson's cat. And Samuel Johnson
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famously used to lavish his cat with
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all sorts of luxuries, in particular oysters. So really
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She, she, she paints this picture of basically a man
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who's so devoted to his cat, and sort of around,
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around them, um, his, his friends and companions are really kind
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of laughing, um, behind his back. Um, so it,
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it is unusual. It's unusual that it's just those 2 lines,
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and certainly, um, you know, the way the singer is
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written for. But, um, my partner in this recording, James Gilchrist,
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is absolutely wonderful. He's a sort of quintessential English
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tenor. His diction is the most
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impeccable thing you've ever heard. And,
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you know, he delivers it in such a characterful
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and, yeah, as I say, quintessentially English
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way, I would say. So it's, you know, it's funny,
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we're meant to laugh at it, but somehow it's still a
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piece of modern music. You know, I think she, she hasn't sort of compromised
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to write it, but she's managed to write something that's incredibly
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entertaining, or certainly the audiences I've played it to,
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which actually included a concert at Samuel Johnson's
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house in London, which was quite an
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event. I'm sort of amongst all the museum memorabilia
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of him. Wow. Um, so that, yeah, that was a really, really special
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event. So yeah, I think it's— I've never really played
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another piece like it, I have to say. Yeah, but it's very unusual.
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Isn't it interesting when you hear a really good singer speak, you almost
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feel like, I don't want to speak after that. That was so
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beautiful. Every word is something special.
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Yes, absolutely. No, I totally can understand that.
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So next we'll listen to Dr. Johnson defines a cat
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and mouse from Hodge, Dr. Johnson's Cat by Judith Bingham.
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Hodge, Dr. Johnson's Cat.
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Dr. Johnson defines a cat and a mouse.
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Cat, a domestic animal
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that catches mice.
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Commonly reckoned by naturalists the
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lowest order of the leonine species.
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Mouse!
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Mouse, the smallest of all beasts,
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a little animal haunting,
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haunting houses, haunting houses
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and cornfields. The smallest, the smallest of all
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beasts,
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destroyed,
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destroyed by cats. And that
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was the first movement of Hodge, Dr. Johnson's Cat by Judith Bingham with Robert
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Plane, clarinet, and James Gilchrist, tenor.
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We're taking a quick break, but we'll be right back with more Clarinet Corner on
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Troy Public Radio. Today, we're talking to British clarinetist
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Robert Plane about his new CD, Elsewhere: Commissions for Clarinet,
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Volume 2, all works that he commissioned from composers,
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and these are premiere recordings of each of these pieces. And next, we're going
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to listen to a work called The Rising
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of Sirius by Piers Hallowell.
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And tell me about this work. It's for clarinet and
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piano trio. Yes, I've been very
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fortunate, well, in many ways, but one artistic
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result of being married to the violinist Lucy Gould is that she's violinist
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of the Gould Piano Trio. And so we've done concerts
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together now for well, getting on for 35 years.
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So, you know, we've loved exploring the key
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repertoire, Messiaen Quartet we've played countless times,
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but we really have tried to set out to broaden
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the repertoire for that combination of instruments as well.
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And for the last 28 years we've been running a chamber music
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festival up in the north of England in a beautiful little village
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called Corbridge, which is right near Hadrian's Wall
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on the old border between England and Scotland.
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Incredibly picturesque area, and it's
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in Corbridge and the nearby town of Hexham that Saint
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Wilfrid initially established a
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church and a monastery, and that was 1,350
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years ago. And this has become a sort of momentous event in this
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village. It was a big milestone. So we decided
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at our festival that we'd celebrate it with a commission
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that in some way reflected St Wilfrid and his
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buildings in particular. So Piers Hallowell's way
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of showing this in this piece was to base the structure
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of the music on the structure of St Andrew's
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Church in Corbridge, which is where we we give our concerts.
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So there's an element of sort of procession through the
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nave, and then actually one very special and quite
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spooky bit in the piece, and this is possibly unique,
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totally unique, is that in the middle of the piece there's
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a kind of reflective section where the players invite
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the audience in the concert to join in a
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chant of Veni Creator.
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It's just on a sort of 3 note figure that goes up,
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up and down, and there's no coordination. It's like a really
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sort of surreal, yeah, very,
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very effective chant that comes up from
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the audience. So it's been a really special experience
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actually. We've played it all over the UK now and
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sort of inviting the audience to become part of the performance.
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It's just something that had never happened Or
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certainly not in a chamber music concert. And it's— I think
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sometimes they start off with a little bit of trepidation because it's a slightly uncomfortable
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experience maybe. But some audiences have become really
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immersed in the idea of this. And it's
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made a very special connection between
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us as performers and our audience. A real shared participation,
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I think. Excellent. Well, let's take a listen. This is The Rising of Sirius by
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Piers Hallowell with Robert Plane, clarinet, and the Gould Piano
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That was The Rising of Sirius by Piers Hallowell with
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Robert playing clarinet and the Gould Piano Trio.
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Next, we'll listen to a work— okay, I got to tell
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you, Rob, when I looked at your CD and I saw this was by David
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Matthews, my first thought was Dave Matthews, who is
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like an American rock band guy. And it's
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not that Dave. It probably couldn't be further from the truth. Yeah, it's David
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Matthews, a British composer, and this work is called A
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Song for Barry. So tell me about this one. Yes,
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well, this David Matthews actually has
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a brother called Colin Matthews, who's also a very distinguished British
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composer, and he where he worked for Benjamin Britten and sort of carried
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that British compositional line.
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And David Matthews wrote this piece in memory of
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a great friend of his that he lost
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2 years ago, just when we premiered this piece.
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And he was the famous musical documentary
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filmmaker Barry Gavin,
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whose work has explored a huge number
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of composers. And it was a really, really close friendship.
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And this piece, it takes its theme
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from using the letters of Barry Gavin's
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name in the way that Shostakovich
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would have done, for example. And he
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weaves that theme into the piece. So it's
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a really reflective piece, but David Matthews does say
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that it's a sort of remembering somebody warmly rather
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than a sort of memorial piece. It's not meant to feel tragic,
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and I think that's certainly the overriding feeling
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when you listen. It's just sort of warm memories and just huge
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affection. And for a piece that was written only 2
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years ago, it has a very sort of
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lyrical, romantic, I would say,
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quality. So it's been a beautiful piece to
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learn. And it's actually, as a clarinetist, it's, you know, it's a real piece
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that's sort of based on sound and expression. Yeah, it's a beautiful work.
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So we'll give a listen now. A Song for Barry by David Matthews with
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Robert playing clarinet and Tim Horton piano.
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And for you listeners who are connected to Canada, not that Tim Horton,
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not the Tim Horton convenience store with
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food and stuff, Tim Horton, the British pianist.
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And that was A Song for Barry by David Matthews
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with Robert playing clarinet and Tim Horton piano.
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Robert, thank you so much for being here on the show today.
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Been an absolute delight. It's really lovely to, um, to be part of
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your amazing celebration of the clarinet. It's incredible the way you,
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you know, elevate the instrument and celebrate it so publicly. Thank you
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so much. This CD is called Elsewhere: Commissions for Clarinet Volume 2. Check out
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Robert Plane's website too. It has his massive
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discography with so many wonderful works, well recorded,
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a lot of British music too. You've been listening to Clarinet Corner,
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a production of Troy Public Radio. Special thanks to the
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John M. Long School of Music at Troy University, which you can visit online
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at troy.edu/music. Our producer is
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Joey Hudson. I'm Tim Phillips, and there's a lot more where that came from.
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This is Troy Public Radio.