by Jonathan Lyness
“The clarinet is by far the finest woodwind instrument”. Now, there’s a controversial statement, if ever there was one! It’s one I’m sure the founder of Ensemble Cymru, clarinettist Peryn Clement-Evans, might entirely agree with! 😉 However, this statement is not from Peryn, nor from me (I hasten to add) but from the English composer John Ireland (1879 – 1962). And his output testifies to his feelings on the matter; he wrote three pieces of chamber music involving wind instruments: a sextet for clarinet, horn and strings, a sonata for clarinet and piano, and a trio for clarinet, cello and piano, composed just prior to the outbreak of WWI.
It was Mozart who, in the 1780s, became the first celebrated composer to introduce the new, modern clarinet into the string-dominated chamber music world with his Clarinet Quintet and his “Kegelstatt” Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, performed by EC for April’s concerts. These works were written especially for Mozart’s clarinettist friend Anton Stadler. In 1861 the French composer Louise Farrenc composed a clarinet trio for her clarinet friend Adolphe Leroy (by this point the clarinet had developed considerably as an instrument since the days of Mozart). Thirty years later, in 1891, the composer Johannes Brahms had a clarinet friend as well! His name was Richard Mühlfeld, for whom Brahms wrote four substantial chamber works including a clarinet quintet and a clarinet trio.
John Ireland, as a teenager, actually heard Mühlfeld playing in a performance of Brahms’s quintet at St. James’ Hall, London in 1898. He was in awe of both Mühlfeld and the potential of the clarinet as a chamber music instrument. A few years later, Brahms’s clarinet trio was to provide the impetus for Ireland’s trio, being for the same combo: clarinet, cello and piano (other clarinet trio combinations, such as Mozart’s, are available). However, Mühlfeld was no longer alive when Ireland wrote his trio, and it’s not clear that poor Ireland had any particular clarinet friends of his own!
Unlike Debussy and Vaughan Williams, whose music also features in Ensemble Cymru’s June concerts, John Ireland was never hugely appreciated in his lifetime. His clarinet trio was first performed in June 1914, and possibly again in May 1915. Ireland then shelved it, and although he re-used some of the material, the original clarinet trio remained unperformed, unpublished and hidden for almost 90 years! It was painstakingly reconstructed by the Canadian clarinettist Stephen Fox from a disparate collection of incomplete material held at the British Library and given its first modern UK performance in 2007. It’s a mature piece, dramatic and beautiful, strikingly original and typically ‘Ireland-esque’. And although it is clearly the work of a British composer, the influence of Debussy and Ravel abound. With its dual British and French sonorities, no doubt it would have gone down very well at one of Gregynog’s inter-war music festivals, had the Davies sisters known of its existence.
Musicians
Christopher Goodman – clarinet
Nia Harries – cello
Richard Ormrod – piano
Programme
- Vaughan Williams – Six Studies in English Folksongs for Cello and Piano (1926) 9’
- Claude Debussy – Premiere Rhapsodie for Clarinet and Piano (1909-10) 9’
- John Ireland – Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano (1913) 23’
