Ori Kam / Sharon Kam / Matan Porat CONTRASTS

 

CONTRASTS

 

Sharon Kam / ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra / Gregor Bühl WEBER - KURPINSKI - CRUSELL

WEBER - KURPINSKI - CRUSELL

THORSTEN ENCKE A Portrait

A Portrait of the composer  Thorsten Encke „When you embark on an artistic project, structural considerations can serve as a spark of inspiration. Like an architect, you roll out a blueprint, jot down a series of notes, and establish a basic framework of interval relations. Then you thoughtfully furnish the interior by relating motifs to one another and assigning them dramatic roles within the musical narrative. All of this is certainly necessary. But then, new ideas take you on detours, unplanned inspiration imposes itself on your thoughts, and the structural spark of inspiration dwindles with each new effort. The work acquires a life of its own; it wants to grow beyond its former limits. As an artist, you have to surrender and try to sense where the journey leads you.
A wrestling match often arises between what was planned and what is possible: the delicate task of choosing the most promising path that branches off into the scrub. One needs to remain open to new possibilities while becoming confident in the consistency of one’s ideas. That is what inspiration is all about. One should always attempt to achieve a balance between formal construction and sheer inventiveness. Invention should take precedence over structure; in the best of cases, the latter remains under the surface as a kind of firm inner cohesion.
Invention is what shines in a work; it is what astounds the listener. On the other hand, an overtly visible structure is nothing more than a skeleton, placed in evidence to satisfy our anatomical curiosity. “Music is life; it is movement, rhythm, and Gestalt.” That is what a female audience member once said to me after a concert, and I agree. The listener has the right to expect such things from a musical work: movement, rhythm, and, most of all, Gestalt, e.g., a form one can grasp. The Gestalt confronts the listener and offers itself as a partner in dialogue. The listener decides whether she wants to enter into that dialogue; she decides how she perceives the Gestalt, and whether she will let herself be moved. If the listener is willing to actively participate in that process, she is creating the work herself. Only the Gestalt offers us an inkling of the great fabric of life, a shimmering reflection of eternity. Whenever music inspires a listener in this way, it manages to fulfill its most noble purpose.
As a composer, I spend many hours alone at my desk, painstakingly fleshing out my ideas. The written score reduces the vast array of sonorities I had previously imagined. It obliges me to formulate a clear vision, without blurring the contours. The score’s limitations force us to become inventive. The problem of notation in itself is what ultimately leads us to express ourselves in new ways. What is my current personal motto? This, perhaps: to retain a love of experiment in terms of content and expression; to remain clear in my musical language.

Sharon Kam / Gregor Bühl / London Symphony Orchestra AMERICAN CLASSICS

This is a unique collection of American works involving the clarinet‚ brilliantly performed‚ but sadly‚ it is a disc very hard to enjoy because of the unrelentingly aggressive quality of the recording. Most of this music is jazz­influenced‚ which may account for the balance of a recording‚ made in the Olympic Studios in London‚ which makes it feel as though you are shut up in a matchbox with very loud and persistent performers. Maybe that is the way some jazz­lovers want to hear their music‚ but these are works that‚ for all their brash qualities‚ demand the subtlety of light and shade‚ of dynamics less than fortissimo‚ and they hardly get that here. For all the virtuosity and feeling for idiom in Sharon Kam’s solo work‚ it sometimes feels as though one is actually inside the clarinet.
I remember feeling how unnecessarily dry and aggressive the recording was for Simon Rattle’s ‘Jazz Album’ – listed in selected comparisons above – which includes Bernstein’s Prelude‚ Fugue and Riffs in a superb performance with Michael Collins as soloist. But going back to that makes me realise how‚ close as the sound is‚ it has more air round it than this one‚ and reveals far greater subtlety of shading in Collins’s solo work than is revealed in Sharon Kam’s. As for Sabine Meyer’s performance on her ‘A Tribute to Benny Goodman’ album‚ it masterfully reveals the work as having far more qualities than surface brilliance.
When it comes to Copland’s Clarinet Concerto‚ the contrast between Meyer and Kam is even more marked. The wonderfully smoochy melody of the long opening section‚ which is so seductive with Meyer‚ is here made to sound sour and unpleasant‚ and for that I am not inclined to blame the soloist‚ but simply the recording. From their scrawny sound you would never recognise string­players from the LSO either. The second of the four movements of Morton Gould’s Derivations is a ‘slowly moving contrapuntal blues’‚ but it comes across as depressingly arid. Rhythmic control in the fast music here and throughout the disc cannot be faulted‚ but how wearing it all is.
The Gershwin songs are performed in free‚ jazz­elaborated arrangements by the conductor John Cameron and Gregor Bühl (Summertime)‚ and there you might argue that the close­up sound is more appropriate‚ but even in Artie Shaw’s Clarinet Concerto – by far the least adventurous music on the disc‚ yet a skilful mix of classical and jazz procedures – one craves for more subtlety in the sound. And how odd that no hint is given in the booklet of Kam’s background or achievements. (Gramophone)

Sharon Kam / Gregor Bühl / Sinfonia Varsovia THE ROMANTIC CLARINET

The clarinet made its bow in the eighteenth century and was the immediate beneficiary of Mozart's attention, but the instrument came into its own in the nineteenth century. Inasmuch as major clarinet literature from the nineteenth century is concerned, works of Carl Maria von Weber dominate the field, but there was more to it than that, and clarinet virtuoso Sharon Kam helps widen the perspective in her Berlin Classics effort The Romantic Clarinet. She starts out with a concerto -- and what a concerto -- by Julius Rietz, a close contemporary of Felix Mendelssohn. It is a superb work; stormy, intense, and involving and probably is to the clarinet what the E minor violin concerto of Mendelssohn is to the violin. On Max Bruch's Concerto for clarinet, viola, and orchestra in E minor, Op. 88 (1911), Kam is joined her brother, violist Ori Kam. To be fair, the work is perhaps friendlier to the viola than it is to the clarinet; much of the time the clarinet holds down the fort while the viola goes gallivanting about. With the Weber Quintet in B flat, Op. 34, we are entering more familiar territory, but it is heard in the arrangement for clarinet and string orchestra, recorded with some frequency, but not nearly as often as the chamber version. In this piece, the Sinfonia Varsovia plays a stronger and more assertive role than in the others, which is definitely a plus for the music.

Sharon Kam's tone is even, controlled, and cool, though it is appropriately explosive in the few passages where such effects are called for; she effortlessly leaps around registers, and her passagework is clean and light as a feather. The Sinfonia Varsovia is led by Gregor Bühl who, overall, contributes a sensitive and well-balanced accompaniment that never overpowers the soloist and provides support where it is needed. Berlin Classics' recording is clear and attractively resonant, though there is some transience in the signal during loud passages where the clarinet register is bright and silvery. (Uncle Dave Lewis)

Sharon Kam PORTRAIT - Virtuose Klarinettenmusik

Sharon Kam is one of the world’s leading clarinet soloists and has been working with renowned orchestras in the United States, Europe, and Japan for over 20 years.

Mozart’s clarinet masterpieces have been an object of artistic focus for Ms. Kam since the beginning of her career. At the age of 16, she performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in her orchestral debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta. A short time later, she performed the Clarinet Quintet with the Guarneri String Quartet in Carnegie Hall, New York.

As part of Mozart’s 250th birthday celebrations at the National Theatre in Prague, her interpretation of the Mozart concerto was televised live in 33 countries and is available on DVD. In the same year, she was able to realize her longtime dream of recording the Concerto and the Clarinet Quintet using the basset clarinet. Contributing to the widely praised disk were eminent string players Isabelle van Keulen, Ulrike-Anima Mathé, Volker Jacobsen and Gustav Rivinus, as well as the Haydn Philharmonie.

As a passionate chamber musician, Sharon Kam regularly works with artists such as Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Enrico Pace, Daniel Müller-Schott, Leif Ove Andsnes, Caroline Widmann and the Jerusalem Quartet. She is a frequent guest at festivals in Schleswig-Holstein, Heimbach, Rheingau, Risør, Cork, Verbier, and Delft, as well as the Schubertiade festival. She is also an active performer of contemporary music music and has premiered works by Krzysztof Penderecki (the Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quartet), Herbert Willi (the Clarinet Concerto, at the Salzburg Festival), Iván Erőd and Peter Ruzicka (at Donaueschingen).

Sharon Kam feels at home in a variety of musical genres – from classical to modern music and jazz – a fact reflected in her diverse discography. She received the ECHO “Instrumentalist of the Year” award two times: in 1998, for her Weber recording with the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig and Kurt Masur, and in 2006, for her CD with the Leipzig Radio Orchestra featuring works by Spohr, Weber, Rossini and Mendelssohn. Her “American Classics” disc with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by her husband Gregor Bühl, was awarded the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik Prize.