The Antony Michaelson Quintet: Mosaic: Clarinet
Quintets by Brahms & Mozart
Stereophile STPH015 CD. Adrian Levine,
John Atkinson, prods.; John Atkinson, eng, w/John Brandt assisting. DDD. TT: 71:50.
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 Yes, that's Antony Michaelson,
managing director and founder of Musical Fidelity, playing clarinet here. Michaelson, a
lifelong musician and music lover, has studied the clarinet for years, first with Keith
Puddy and John McGraw (back when he was reading at Trinity College) and more recently with
Dame Thea King. As Michaelson tells it, he only founded Musical Fidelity because finding a
hi-fi system that reproduced music to his taste was so difficult. Running his company
didn't give him the same satisfaction as performing, so he resumed serious study of the
clarinet and has released a series of recordings of some of the great chamber pieces
written for his instrument.
This recording came about because John Atkinson mentioned
to Michaelson how much he had enjoyed recording the Jerome Harris Quintet's Rendezvous
[STPH 013] at Blue Heaven Studios in Salina, Kansas, and how perfect the site would be for
chamber music. Michaelson immediately proposed they record the Mozart and Brahms quintets
there.
Those two clarinet quintets, back to back, are about as
close to musical perfection as two works can come. Both quintets were fully realized works
written at the heights of their respective composers' powers. Both were written for
specific clarinetists, and both pieces show off the clarinet's glories as those performers
had revealed them to the composers. (Mozart's quintet was written for Anton Stadler;
Brahms's for Richard Mühlfeld.) Both are works written well into the composers' careers.
That's where they part company, however. Mozart's quintet
isn't at all complex or moody. Like many of the composer's works, it is graced with
gorgeous tunes -- motifs that are drunk on their own beauty. This ineffable charm must
have been what prompted Karl Barth to remark, "Whether the angels play only Bach
praising God, I am not quite sure. I am sure, however, that en famille they play
Mozart." Surely, if we deserve to go to heaven, this is the music they will play
there.
Brahms's clarinet quintet is far darker -- it could almost
define the words "suffering" and "resignation." Written in a minor
key, it seems to mull the human condition over and, as it teeters between dogged
determination and resigned patience, to end with an equivocal "Eh!" The final
movement, one of the most economical and perfect gems of the chamber oeuvre, always
seems to me to end far too soon, but what more could Brahms have said?
The performances here are quite marvelous. Michaelson
possesses a huge tone and a musical temperament to match. His Mozart is brash and
dashing, while the Brahms is assertive, even muscular.
There are about as many recordings of these two works as
there have been noteworthy clarinetists. Thea King's recordings of both quintets, for
example, are especially lovely (although I personally find them a trifle cool emotionally)
and, casting further back over the years, there are superb recordings by Alfred Boskovsky
and Gervase de Peyer. How can this one possibly compete?
For one thing, there's the sound. Michaelson was right to
leap at the chance to record at Blue Heaven with Atkinson. The disc's sound is bold,
bright, and full of brilliant tonal color. The contrast between Michaelson's full-bodied
woody sound and the shimmer of the strings is beautifully articulated. The finished
recording sounds to me precisely like real instruments in a real space.
Since John Atkinson and I are neighbors, I had the chance
to hear these sessions in many forms as he worked on constructing the finished recording.
Working with John over the years has been hard on some of my audiophile beliefs about how
one ought to record. In my ignorance, it seemed simple -- all you have to do is set
up the microphones in the right place to capture the perfect blend of primary and
reflected sound and then record in movement-long takes to preserve the sense of a live
performance.
Once I began participating in making recordings -- and
through watching John work after the recording sessions themselves -- I came to realize
that the only thing "simple" about making great-sounding recordings is how close
to "simply impossible" it is.
Recording is as much an art as it is a technology. Even
after John got the Mozart and the Brahms on tape, he needed to work to make them sound as
natural and as clear as they sounded in the recording space itself. This required months
of painstaking work -- of making infinitesimal changes in the arrival time differences
between the pairs of microphones he had set up, of fine-tuning the balance between
instruments, of discovering and exploiting the differences between the way we hear a
musical event and the way that microphones capture it.
So, when I comment on how natural and relaxed Mosaic
sounds, I'm not pretending that it came easy. Months of detailed work and thousands of
agonizing decisions on John Atkinson's part have gone into making this an extremely easy
recording to listen to.
But beyond the sound, I like the musical performances here.
Michaelson's approach to the Brahms caught me by surprise. It's a mature work, to be sure
-- it could not have been written by a young man. But that doesn't mean it must feel old
or beaten down or defeated. It must reflect struggle, but it needn't express despair.
Michaelson's bold interpretation stares the quintet's big questions straight in the eye.
When, after pondering them, the clarinetist answers with a weary "What can you
do?" it smacks less of tired equivocation than a triumphant "I'm still
here!"
And, to my mind, rearranging your preconceptions is what
great art is supposed to do.
Of course, Mr. Michaelson didn't do it all by himself. The
strings, especially Adrian Levine, offer the perfect combination of support and contrast
to Michaelson's big-boned sound. Levine has lovely tone, full of air and possessing a
silvery bite. The ensemble playing, particularly in the last movement of the Mozart
quintet, is refined and stylish. The group's charm and grace allow these performances to
stack up nicely against what most people would reckon to be daunting competition.
Mosaic is the perfect anodyne for what's been ailing
the classical music recording industry. Atkinson, Michaelson, and company show us that it is
still possible to say something new about even the most frequently recorded works and to
make new performances of old warhorses compelling, as long as you leaven them with
superlative sound quality. If you want some great music-making capable of allowing
familiar works to sound fresh and strong, or if you're looking for an almost perfect
re-creation of five instruments performing in a great-sounding hall, you owe it to
yourself to hear Mosaic.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
This disc can be ordered directly by visiting
www.stereophile.com.
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