LIGHTNESS OF BEING And so, we come to the final program in the 2023 season of ChamberFest
sounds emerge as fingers stroke the strings from below and the bow glides
Cleveland, which has drawn inspiration from, but not been restrained by,
along the bridge. The results are provocative and beautiful.
themes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The program’s title, echoing that of this year’s festival, is reflected to supreme effect in the works by two
Nothing is remotely provocative about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Quintet
of the most famous prodigies in music, Mozart and Mendelssohn. The living
for Clarinet and Strings in A major, K. 581, which resides in a realm of sublime
German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s Pression for cello stands as a stark
beauty. As noted earlier in ChamberFest, Mozart considered his Quintet in
contrast to the worlds of his Austrian and German predecessors. Such is the
E-flat major for Piano and Winds, K. 452, composed in 1784, to be “the best
ever-changing nature of the human condition, as Milan Kundera probes in
thing I have written in my life.” But he could have made the same claim about
his novel: “The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth,
so many of his other works, including the Clarinet Quintet, from 1789. Mozart
the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of
wrote the piece for his favorite clarinetist, Anton Stadler, on whom he would
burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the
bestow the equally celestial Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in A major,
earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free
K. 622, two years later (just two months before the composer’s death at 35).
as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?...” “Lightness of being” couldn’t be summoned more luminously than in K. 581, in Helmut Lachenmann, born in 1935, has alternated between weight and
which the clarinet and string quartet enter into conversations at once poetic
lightness as one of the champions of musique concrète, a style embracing
and entrancing. The strings open the first movement with a theme of infinite
recorded sounds but expanded by the composer as musique concrète
warmth answered by the clarinet in sophisticated, chipper fashion. This is
instrumentale to define music that explores a range of acoustical sounds.
clearly a meeting of equals: Each instrument contributes commentary as the
As the composer has written, “This piece originated as an introduction to
narrative unfolds in all its graceful wisdom. The second violin introduces a
instrumental musique concrète. In this sort of piece it is common for sound
tender new theme that the clarinet mirrors in minor. Mozart wanders from A
phenomena to be so refined and organized that they are not so much the
major in the short development section and introduces fugal elements, with
results of musical experiences as of their own acoustic attributes. Timbres,
the clarinet playing buoyant arpeggios until the opening material returns with
dynamics, and so on arise not of their own volition but as components of a
new expressions on its face.
concrete situation characterized by texture, consistency, energy, resistance. This does not come from within but from a liberated compositional technique.
As is often the case in Mozart, the slow movement, Larghetto, is a scene of
At the same time it implies that our customary sharply-honed auditory habit is
operatic poignancy, with the clarinet spinning lines of ineffable delicacy.
thwarted. The result is aesthetic provocation: beauty denying habit.”
The first violin and clarinet trade phrases, and the clarinet rises softly above shimmering, muted strings before returning to the main theme and a gradual
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Pression for cello, written in 1969 and revised in 2010, exemplifies this aesthetic
descent to the tranquil close. The hearty Menuetto, unusually, has two trios,
through sundry pressures via extended techniques. Fingers lightly touch the
rather than one. The first trio, for strings, shifts into A minor, with the first
strings and slide up and down. The bow grazes the bridge and beneath the
violin wandering above the others. The clarinet plays a charming, Ländler-like
tail piece. The player taps and rubs the body of the instrument. Otherworldly
figure in the second trio, which includes two-octave arpeggios this instrument