Jean Françaix’s Clarinet Concerto…

Jean Françaix composed his Clarinet Concerto in 1967-68 and dedicated it to Fernand Oubradous, a conductor, chamber music teacher at the Paris conservatoire and bassoonist at the Opéra de Paris. The work was first performed to great acclaim on July 20th, 1968 by Jacques Lancelot, a conservatoire teacher first in Rouen, then in Lyon. Since then it has gone from one success to another, becoming a classic of the clarinet repertoire. “This concerto is amusing to listen to, at least I hope it is”, Jean Françaix wrote. “But playing it is another matter. It is an aerobatics display for the fingers with looping the loop, steep turns and sudden dives to terrify the soloist, who must have nerves of steel and thousands of hours’ flying time under his belt. There are no free rides in this concerto, not even in the slow movement, where enchantingly long passages have to be played in a terrifyingly long single breath.” “To  pursue the aeronautical image further, it’s a bit like the pilot turning the engines off and gliding till the plane is on the brink of plummeting down, then casually flicking the switches back on and swapping his pilot’s helmet for a circus clown’s rotating wig…” This concerto does indeed make formidable demands on the soloist: fast passages, flights of fancy, two cadenzas in both the first and the last movements, a fairly agitated scherzo and an andantino which in spite of its measured pace does not dispense with colourful fioriture. As a result it has always had the reputation of being an “unplayable” concerto, or at best one suited only to a handful of virtuosos. Jack Brymer, himself a brilliant virtuoso, described the work in 1976 as “a work for the future perhaps, for when the instrument has been modernised or the human hand has evolved …”! Since then, this work has motivated instrumentalists and teachers alike, as only a masterpiece can, to push back technical frontiers of the instrument and enable it to play this wonderful music if not with greater ease then at least with greater familiarity. The history of an instrument’s development is always marked by milestone works whose intrinsic value justifies their technical difficulty. Jean Françaix has left clarinettists not only a splendid concerto but also an opportunity to develop their art further.

A concise biography of Jean Françaix...	Jean Françaix by Jean Françaix...	The music of Jean Françaix ...
	Back

---

© BSO | Home | Version française | Nederlandse versie | Deutsche Fassung |