North State Symphony

“... Bugs Bunny in a hula skirt with maracas”

Below are excerpts of an interview with composer Lowell Liebermann about his new Clarinet Concerto. The interview was conducted for the concerto's world premiere in November 2009.

Liebermann was interviewed by Neil Gittleman, Music Director of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra.

Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra November 6, 2009 Program "Classical Connections"

In late July, just after Lowell Liebermann finished composing his new Clarinet Concerto for soloist Jon Manasse…, I interviewed him to discuss the piece and its upcoming premiere in Dayton. Here are some of the juicy bits from that conversation. You can hear more (and some even juicier bits!) on the Classical Connections No. 2 Podcast at daytonphilharmonic.com.

Neil Gittleman: Our readers will be hearing your Clarinet Concerto for the first time… Can you give them a hint of what they’ll be hearing?

Lowell Liebermann: I’m not one of those composers who likes to spend a lot of time explaining music. It’s like the magician who doesn’t want to explain his tricks before the audience sees them!

It’s a three-movement work. The first movement is a balance of lyric and colorful writing in the orchestra. The second movement is a very lyrical movement. The orchestra is predominantly strings, although there’s a big climax where the full orchestra comes in. I had a lot of fun with the last movement. I had this image of Bugs Bunny in a hula skirt with maracas…

NG: Say what?

LL: I was a native New Yorker and moved across the Hudson River to Weehawken, New Jersey five years ago. There’s a big Latino population here and I think some of the sounds of the music that I hear in the street— from cars and things — crept into that last movement, because it does have a salsa-merengue kind of thing going on. It’s a very fun movement. Difficult, too. I’ll be praying for Jon!

NG: How did the piece come about?

LL: I’ve known Jon a while. We were both at Juilliard as students. He performed and recorded my Clarinet Quintet, and I’ve always thought he’s a fantastic player — one of the absolute best. He was interested in having me write him a clarinet concerto and it fell to Tom Parker, Jon’s manager, who took on the heroic task of getting a consortium together — of 13 different orchestras and organizations — that commissioned the piece.

NG: When you write a concerto do you compose with a specific soloist in mind?

LL: I don’t, because even if the piece is commissioned for a particular person, hopefully it’ll go on to be played by many others. That doesn’t mean that I don’t consult with the soloist. In the final stages I showed Jon some things and we had a little bit of a back-and-forth.

With a concerto, one of the things you want to do is push the limits of the instrument, so you’re walking a fine line, with things that verge on being impossible. There were certain things in the very high register where I had questions: “Can this actually be played?” And Jon said, “Yes, I think I can!” But I don’t try to translate anything of the performer’s personality into the music, because when I write the music it’s just me and the notes.

NG: When you compose for the orchestra, do you think of the orchestration from the very beginning, or do you write the notes first and then figure out who plays what?

LL: I have the orchestration in mind. It might not be extremely specific in some instances. You might just think, “OK, this part is going to be strings or this is going to be woodwinds and brass”, and you don’t have the exact details. But in other places you might have a very specific instrumentation in mind.

daytonphilharmonic.com © 2009, NEAL GITTLEMAN