Tuesday 23rd June 2026
Claude Debussy Première Rhapsodie
Debussy’s Première Rhapsodie (First Rhapsody) is a great showcase for the clarinet. Dating from 1910, the work was written at the request of Gabriel Fauré for use in clarinet examinations at the Conservatoire de Paris. The clarinet takes the lead throughout and it is no surprise that it was dedicated to a clarinet professor (Prosper Mimart). The year after Debussy published the clarinet and piano version, he also published an arrangement with an orchestral accompaniment to the clarinet. Debussy was one of the examiners listening to 11 hopeful students perform the work, and was more satisfied with the results than he expected. In fact, of the later version from 1911, he said “… surely this piece is one of the most pleasing I have ever written.”
It says something quite profound about Debussy’s musical integrity that a work written to test and discriminate between the abilities of instrumental students should have been so lyrical and attractive that it remains part of the core repertoire for the clarinet.
Edwin York Bowen Phantasie in F major, Op. 54
Dating from 1918, this single movement work for viola and piano was first performed immediately after then of the first world war. York Bowen was a prolific composer, especially for viola, and had a virtuosic, technically challenging style. Structurally, Phantasie is arched in three sections with the slow second section revealing the main theme, and concluding with an energetic finale that quotes from the first section. The style of this work owes something to Brahms but is otherwise uniquely York Bowen.
Tim Horton and Rachel Roberts were recorded performing the Phantasie at the Church Stretton Arts Festival in 2024, and an excerpt can be heard here.
Robert Schumann Märchenerzählungen, Op. 132
I. Lebhaft, nicht zu schnell (Lively, not too fast)
II. Lebhaft und sehr markiert (Lively and very stressed rhythms)
III. Ruhiges Tempo, mit zartem Ausdruck (Calm tempo, with delicate expression)
IV. Lebhaft, sehr markiert (Lively, very stressed rhythms)
Märchenerzählungen (fairy tales) from 1853 is a late work in 4 movements for violin, clarinet and piano trio. There are no specific stories represented here as far as we know, but rather an enigmatic, romantic impression of the fantasy world of fairy tales in four miniatures. The first of these miniatures is animated and boisterous, followed by a march, a warm slow movement and a finale with a similar mood to the first, quoting from the preceding music.
Huw Watkins Speak Seven Seas
Written as a commission by Lars Vogt, Speak Seven Seas was premiered in 2011 at the Heimbach Festival. Scored for Viola, Clarinet and Piano, Watkins was inspired by the ways in which water could flow, from gentle waves at the shore to powerful tidal torrents. This idea came from the knowledge that the premier would be performed in a hydroelectric power hall. The title originates from Dylan Thomas’ poem “Author’s Prologue”:
...
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and sails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
...
From that aquatic inspiration, it is unsurprising that the single movement Speak Seven Seas trio has unexpected colours and ear-catching gestures.
Joseph Holbrooke Nocturne, Op. 57, no. 1, Fairyland
Composed in 1912, Holbrooke’s Fairyland is based in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name:
Dim vales and shadowy floods
And cloudy looking woods
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane
Again, again---again
...
The music explores a fantasy world using unsettling and frequent changes of tempo, and melodies with ambiguous shapes and forms. This intent to represent the fantastical has been likened to the portrayal of a similar landscape in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano in E flat major, K. 498, Kegelstatt
I. Andante
II. Menuetto
III. Rondeaux: Allegretto
The trio combination of Viola, Clarinet and Piano has been unusual until very recently. This trio dating from 1786 is one of the best known and earliest with these instruments, the others being Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen that we heard earlier and Max Bruch’s Eight Pieces from 1910, and a handful of lesser known works. “Kegelstatt” means “skittle alley” and though Mozart did remark that other works were composed while playing skittles (eg, K487), this particular epithet was not assigned by him to this work – it seems that the first reference was in Köchel’s catalogue dating from some 70 years after Mozart’s death.
Mozart composed this work for specific musicians in his company: Franziska von Jacquin, his piano student, and Anton Stadler, his friend and clarinettist, and Mozart himself playing viola, and perhaps the desire to perform with these musicians set the instrumentation rather than the other way around. However it was created, the notion of friendship seems to be the prevailing idea in this buoyant trio.