Bernhard Henrik
Crusell (1775-1838)
Clarinet Concertos
The Finnish composer Bemhard Henrik Crusell was born in Uusikaupunki,
the Swedish Nystad, in October 1775, the son of a bookbinder, Jakob Crusell.
His musical abilities were early recognised and he had his training, from the
age of eight, as a pupil of a regimental clarinettist, Westerberg. He won the
patronage of a certain Lieutenant Lorenz Armfelt, who in 1788 opened for him
the possibility of a career as an army musician. With the encouragement of Major
Olof von Wallensterna at Sveaborg he was able to join the regimental band of
the Queen Mother's Life Guards, moving to Stockholm in 1791 and, before he was
yet seventeen, assuming the direction of the band. In Stockholm in 1793 he was
recruited as first clarinettist into the Hovkapellet by the Court Kapellmeister
Georg Joseph Vogler, the Abbé Vogler, who owed much to Mannheim and had
entered the service of the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus III in 1786, to
return in 1793, after the King's assassination, in the employment of his former
pupil, now Gustavus Adolphus IV. From 1794 to 1796 he was principal
clarinettist in the wind ensemble of the Prince Regent and in 1798 he was able
to travel to Berlin to study further with the virtuoso Franz Tausch, the teacher
of Heinrich Baermann, and himself a product of Mannheim, now in the service of
King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. In 1803 he took the opportunity of
travelling to Paris for lessons in composition from Gossec and Henri-Montan
Berton and in clarinet from the virtuoso Jean Xavier Lefèvre, who had joined
the staff of the Paris Conservatoire at its foundation in 1795. In the Swedish
court music establishment, to which he returned after a few months in Paris, he
served, from about 1808, as acting Kapellmeister but in 1818, on the
accession to the throne of Count Bernadotte, had to content himself with the
post of music director of the band of the Royal Grenadier Life Guards, a
position he retained until his death in 1838. Crusell won wider distinction in
Stockholm. Not only was he recognised as one of the great clarinet virtuosi of
his time, but, a man of wide culture, he also won distinction as a linguist,
with translations of opera libretti. His own opera Den lilla slafvinnan (‘The
Little Slave Girl’), a version of the work of the French 'Corneille of the
boulevards', Guilbert de Pixérécourt, won success, as did his setting of a
dozen poems by the Swedish poet Esaias Tegnér, drawn from his historically
inspired Frithiofs Saga, among other songs. Crusell was awarded the Gold
Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy in 1837.
The first of Crusell's three clarinet concertos, the Concerto in
E flat major, Opus 1, dedicated to Count Gustav Trolle-Bonde, is thought
to have been written at some time between 1803 and 1805 and was published in
Leipzig in 1811. The work opens with the expected orchestral exposition, after
which the soloist enters with a characteristically embellished version of the
first subject, leading, in writing that displays the range and possibilities of
the clarinet, to the second subject, now in the expected key of B flat major.
The material is developed and returns in recapitulation. The A flat major slow
movement allows the clarinet a brief aria, to be followed by the lively final Rondo,
which again finds room for virtuoso display in scales, arpeggios and
figuration that exploits the contrasted registers of the solo instrument.
Crusell's Concerto in F minor, Opus 5, has been dated to 1815. It
was dedicated to Alexander I, Tsar of Russia, and published, when the necessary
permission had been granted, in 1818. The choice of key and the nature of the
thematic material make of this work something very different. The first
movement is again in the expected form, with an orchestral exposition dominated
by the principal theme, leading to the entry of the soloist. Again in the solo
writing there is a full use of the resources of the instrument and the
composer's own virtuosity as a performer, with the two characteristic registers
of the clarinet exploited at once, before the development of the theme by the
solo instrument. The key of F minor allows an additional element of drama and
occasional poignancy that is very much of its period. A portrait of the
composer painted in the 1820s by Johan Gustaf Sandberg shows him holding the
score of the concerto with the principal theme of the first movement seen in
the music he is holding, a suggestion of its importance to him. The D flat
major slow movement, an Andante pastorale in a lilting 9/8 metre, gives
a chance for display of another kind, in its dynamic changes and contrasts,
with final echo effects that offer, incidentally, a further technical challenge
in the demand for the softest playing imaginable, as the clarinet answers the
orchestra. The movement is followed by a final F minor Rondo of great
charm, ending in a positive F major.
The third of Crusell's clarinet concertos, the Concerto in B flat
major, Opus 11, was published in 1828 and dedicated to Crown Prince
Oscar of Sweden and Norway. It is an earlier composition than the Concerto in
F minor and seemingly dates from 1807. The soloist enters at once with
the orchestra, adding its own element to the first dozen bars or so, before the
orchestra is left to pursue its own course. An ascending arpeggio introduces
the solo entry proper, after which the thematic material is fully explored,
with all the resources of the solo instrument. The E flat major slow movement,
as so often, uses a theme that starts with the notes of the tonic chord. There
is room for a cadenza and for a show of technical virtuosity that always
remains subservient to the music itself. The concerto ends with an Alia
polacca movement, its varied rhythmic figuration again characteristic of
clarinet writing of the period, of the work of Spohr and of Weber, although it
is Crusell himself, who, as a remarkable performer, knows above all how to
integrate technical with musical possibilities.
Per Billman
Per Billman was born in 1961 and started to play the clarinet in the
municipal music school in his home town of Tingsryd. The experience he gained
playing in wind bands there inspired him to continue his studies at the
Conservatories in Malmö and Stockholm. After graduating in 1985 he spent
several years as a freelance musician in Stockholm at the Folk Opera, with the
Stockholm Ensemble and with the Stockholm Chamber Orchestra, of which he is
still a member. From 1988 to 1991 he was a member of the Falu Wind Quintet, and
he now performs with the Vadeaux Quintet. Since 1991 he has been principal clarinet
at the Royal Opera House, a position which he assumed exactly 190 years after
Bernhard Crusell.
Uppsala Chamber Orchestra
The Uppsala Chamber Orchestra was established in 1968 under Carl Rune
Larsson, director musices at the University of Uppsala. Originally
employing professional and very competent amateur players, the orchestra
underwent re-organisation in 1988 and again in 1993, now with a varying
complement of twenty-five to over forty musicians. In 1994 Gérard Korsten
became the first chief conductor. This is the orchestra's second CD for Naxos,
the first being an enormously successful recording of the complete Drottningholm
Music by the eighteenth-century Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman (Naxos
8553733).
Gérard Korsten
Since 1994 Gérard Korsten has been principal conductor of the Uppsala
Chamber Orchestra. Over the years he has had a strong influence on the
orchestra, conducting many concerts in the Great Hall of Uppsala University. He
was also the driving force behind a production of Mozart's Le nozze di
Figaro at the City Theatre in Uppsala. Gérard Korsten hails from South
Africa and still lives in Cape Town. Following violin studies in South Africa
and the United States, he studied conducting with Sándor Végh at the Mozarteum
in Salzburg. He is in great demand in the field of opera, not least in his
native country, at the Cape Town Opera House. He spends a large part of the
year in Europe, working with major orchestras in Germany, Austria, France and
Italy. Since 1997 he has been principal conductor of the Transvaal Philharmonic
Orchestra.