Fell Clarinet Quartet

Fell Clarinet Quartet

The clarinet is one of the most agile of musical instruments, and coming in several sizes it offers composers a very wide range of pitch, dynamic and tonal possibilities.

By beginning their programme for the Rochdale Music Society with the set of Ancient Hungarian Dances arranged by the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas the Fell Quartet set out their stall confidently to display just how and why the clarinet quartet has come to be accepted as a medium, like the string quartet, for artistic expression of the
highest order.

In this, as in every work they played throughout the evening, the Fell Quartet, led by Colin Blamey, revealed its devotion to the clarinet and its readiness to promote original music by contemporary composers as well as bringing to the concert-goer’s attention earlier, unfamiliar yet attractive music successfully adapted for concert performance by a clarinet quartet.

Eddie McGuire’s Celtic Knotwork, which features elements of Scottish folk music to great atmospheric effect, Dubois’ Quatuor, with its unmistakably French sounding melodic and harmonic inflexions, an engaging arrangement for clarinet quartet of Gershwin’s Three Preludes (originally for piano) and an exhilerating concert medley of Klezmer music put together by a former member of the Fell Quartet, Lenny Sayers, entitled Raisins & Almonds, made up the rest of the busy first half of the concert.

If any doubts about the validity and sustainability of a concert given by an ensemble of four clarinets had lingered in the minds of members of the audience as the concert began, they will surely have been fully dispersed by the time the interval arrived!

The technical mastery of Colin, along with the other members of the group, Helen Bywater, Marianne Rawles and Keith Slade, all of whom could turn their lips and lungs to E flat, B flat, A or Bass clarinet at will, was evident across the whole range of their repertory. As was their infectious enthusiasm for musicmaking as an enjoyable activity for performer and listener alike communicated by each of them as they
spoke in turn about the music to be played.

The second half of the concert began with a short piece entitled, Squirrels run along the fence top, by Graham Marshall, resident in Rochdale, who was present and gave a brief explanatory introduction to it.

He had written it expressly for the Fell Quartet in 2008 after being inspired by the daily view of squirrels running backwards and forward along the fence top outside his study window. “Squirrels mean clarinets”, he said, and so it was proved in an impeccable performance of this ‘post-minimalist’ music, which was warmly received by Graham’s fellow Rochdale music lovers.

Czech composer Jiri Hudec’s Rapsodia per Quattro, Yvonne Desportes’ French Suite, and Ian Holloway’s Die Kunst der Klarinette (Variations on ‘Colonel Bogey’) continued to add to the immense range of artistic expression and masterly performances enjoyed by the audience on this eventful occasion. Warmth or coolness, a biting attack or an imperceptible approach to sounds both high and low such as can be obtained by from members of the clarinet family: all were delivered with consummate ease by this
remarkably well-balanced quartet personnel, who rounded off the evening with a delightful arrangement of the Gershwin standard, Oh, Lady be Good, and then returned to add a little ragtime glitter as an encore.

The next Rochdale Music Society concert will be on at 7.30pm Saturday 10 May in Heywood Civic Centre when the Erringden Piano Trio will play music by Beethoven, Frank Bridge and Mendelssohn.