Clarinet Concerto

Clarinet Concerto (Sky Blue) is in three movements (fast, slow, fast). The first and third movements are for solo clarinet and full orchestra. The second movement is for solo clarinet and strings only. The solo versus ensemble dynamic is at its most intense in the third movement where different kinds of textures are explored, exchanged and resolved. The subtitle "Sky Blue" is from a painting (1940) by Wassily Kandinsky in which figures appear to float freely across a clear blue sky. The painting has been described as ‘an ethereal, Miró-like confection with biomorphic squiggles that buzz like glimmering insects in the afternoon sun’ (Mona Molarsky). There are some places in the music which feature soloists in the orchestra alongside the solo clarinet, perhaps like the free-floating figures in Kandinsky’s painting. The music has passages of simplicity, contrasting with places of greater complexity. The opening of the work is radiant, with energy and warmth. This material is recalled towards the end of the work in the third movement. Between these points, lightness, darkness, changing colours, tempos and tensions are explored. The work combines chromatic musical material with a large-scale tonal structure, sometimes hidden and sometimes explicit, which encompasses the three movements. The work was conceived for solo clarinet in A, to explore this instrument's particularly expressive timbre and considerable range, including its low C sharp (in the second movement).