Program Notes

"The Concerto was written with the virtuosity of Richard Stoltzman clearly in mind. Since 1976 I have been composing a considerable amount of music for the orchestra and other very large ensemble settings. My first two symphonies were completed around the time of the inception of the Clarinet Concerto. The powerful image of the symphony held its grip on my imagination, and thus the Clarinet Concerto came to be subtitled 'A Symphony.' In the Concerto I wanted to explore a synthesis between these two forms within a single movement structure. The 'normal' size of a single movement structure was therefore inevitably expanded, and within it smaller sections formed into secondary pillars. "Another reason, more pragmatic in nature, determined the necessity of a one movement structure. The economic factor of rehearsing and performing a multi-movement work is overwhelming. And since I have been having success in getting my single movement works performed by major orchestras, I felt I should continue the pattern out of the obvious practical necessities. However, I have not let this seeming limitation upset the nature of my musical ideas—quite the contrary—in fact, I have felt very comfortable in being able to express an ongoing melodic idea growing from a seedling into the most varied and phantasmagoric transformations, never ending and yet always changing and fostering new ideas one after the other in a drama of perpetual invention and dialogue. In the Concerto the contrast between the symphonic nature of the orchestral writing and the solo virtuosic, cadenza-like passages of the solo Bb clarinet, which are at times in conflict with the orchestra, and at other times in harmony and conversation with the orchestra, was my greatest challenge. There are times when the solo Bb clarinet is 'absorbed' into the overall orchestra texture—becoming, as it were, an additional member of the orchestral clarinet family; and there are times when the solo clarinet takes the role of antagonist, breaking away as if unleashed and independent from the orchestral fabric. But finally the clarinet and orchestra resolve into a symphonic union wherein the independent and separate natures of the concerto and symphonic idea are ultimately blended. Perhaps one might more easily perceive the work as a gigantic fantasy: whirling, resolving, changing, whirling, resolving, etc., as if a giant kaleidoscopic mirror were continually reflecting a panorama of exploding and evolving musical atoms throughout an endless galaxy of color, rhythm, and time—a glimpse perhaps at the very universe in which we will all hopefully share a future harmony and creative wealth beyond the confines of our present imaginings.

—William Thomas McKinley (© 1980), from 5 Jul 1980 program.