One of the most influential French composers of the first half of the 20th Century, Claude Debussy wrote music that was quintessentially French. With exquisite timbres and textures, Debussy created music that stood as the antithesis of the prevailing Germanic traditions championed by the 'establishment'. His early music was influenced by Wagner and symbolist poetry but it evolved into a unique French voice synonymous with the Pre-Raphaelite and Impressionist movements that straddled the dawn of the new century. His election to the Conseil Supérieur of the Paris Conservatoire in 1909 went a lon ..read more

Witold Lutoslawski was one of the foremost composers of the 20th Century. His early life was marred by the loss of his father and eldest brother at the hands of the Bolsheviks and his own brush with death at the hands of Nazis in the Second World War. Thankfully Lutoslawski escaped the clutches of the Germans and found his way back to Warsaw where he forged a living playing in cafés with his friend the composer Andrzek Panufnik. After the war Lutoslawski struggled, like many composer of serious art music, to express himself through his music in a way that was acceptable to the socialist realis ..read more

Composer of over 70 scores for film and TV, former flautist with the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst and William Walton, William Alwyn is one of the most under-rated composers of the 20th Century. His prolific output is over-shadowed by the works of Benjamin Britten and perhaps Malcolm Arnold, another composer a degree more famous than Alwyn in his writing for film. This relatively obscurity is a crying shame as Alwyn developed a beguiling musical voice that is dramatically presented in the Clarinet Sonata dating from 1962. Consider that this Sonata was ..read more

Born into a wealthy London family, Arnold Bax was able to follow his passions without constraint as a young man. This saw him travel across Europe in the years preceding the Great War absorbing music, ballet and culture from a world that was about to be ripped apart by war. His private income afforded him the luxury of not needing to work for money. This set him apart from most of his peers and may have resulted in a sense of not quite 'fitting in'. Nonetheless he was a prolific composer able to continue honing his craft through the First World War as a result of a heart condition that preclud ..read more

There is something about the clarinet that composers discover or perhaps rediscover when they are in their twilight years. Mozart, Brahms, Poulenc, Howells and this episode's master, John Ireland all wrote their final and arguably best chamber works for the clarinet.  It is hard to imagine that at the start of the 20th century the clarinet was still a relative newcomer to the world of classical chamber music. Frederick Thurston, the finest clarinettist of his generation, first learned the instrument at the start of the new century. His talents soon earned him a place at the prestigious Ro ..read more

Urbane, witty, tragic, spiky and lyrical! Just a few words that give a flavour of the artistry of Francis Poulenc. Singled out as part of a gaggle of artistic friends that hung out in a bookshop on la rive gauche in the 1920s, Les Six, was a master of mélodies whether in Art Song or instrumentally. The death of parents pushed him towards a series of father figure composers and musicians; Ricardo Viñes, Erik Satie, Georges Auric and Igor Stravinsky.  Scarcely 19 when he wrote his first published works, that included the quirky Sonata for two clarinets with it's innovative use of bitonality ..read more

Herbert Howells was composing at a time of tremendous upheaval and turmoil in Europe. Born in Gloucestershire he found his musical education through the church, learning organ and gaining a place as a chorister. Following training at the Royal College of Music, Howells was known primarily as a teacher, chorus master and adjudicator. He held down two major jobs simultaneously, which allowed little time for compositon. We are blessed however with the Clarinet Sonata that dates from 1946-1951. Written for the eminent clarinettist Frederick Thurston, Howells penned this Sonata in the wake of a sha ..read more

Exiled in Switzerland and trying to scrape a living for himself whilst the Great War raged across Europe, Stravinsky wrote the iconic Soldier's Tale. This travelling theatre piece was a huge shift in scale for a composer used to penning works for the grandest ballet company of the time, Les Ballet Russes, in Paris. The Russian folktale of a soldier encountering the devil who tries to trick him into gambling away his precious violin served as an apt moral commentary on the time. The Soldier's Tale was only made possibly through the generous patronage of Weiner Reinhard to whom clarinetists owe ..read more

Labelled as an 'Atonal Noisemaker' of 'Degenerate Music' Paul Hindemith was forbidden from working in his native Germany in the 1930s. Undeterred he embarked on a series of performance/lecture tours to the USA in 1937 and ultimately emigrated there in 1940. This turbulent time in world history proved fruitful for the prolific Hindemith in spite of the ban on his music under the Nazi regime. The Clarinet Sonata of 1939 is one of 17 Sonatas Hindemith wrote in the 5 years between 1935 and his settling in the United States in 1940. It is a four-movement work full of humour, lyricism, brooding inte ..read more

One of my all time favourite Clarinet Sonatas is that written by the master Leonard Bernstein. This was in fact his first published work and what an Op.1 it is! Composed from the Autumn of 1941 to the Spring of 1942, Bernstein combined influences of the great Paul Hindemith, composer-in-residence at Tanglewood in the Summer of 1940 with his own fresh, vibrant jazz inflected style. There are distinct fore-shadows of West Side Story's punchy Latin grooves and heartfelt lyricism woven throughout this short two movement 'fantasy'. Join me as I share my love of this great masterwork of the 20th cen ..read more