Nielsen & Lindberg: Clarinet Concertos Sebastian Manz

• Carl Nielsen (1865 - 1931):
• 1 Serenata in vano 07:40
• Clarinet Concerto, Op. 27:
• 2 Clarinet Concerto, Op. 27: I. Allegretto un poco 08:25
• 3 Clarinet Concerto, Op. 27: II. Poco adagio - Allegro ma non troppo 11:58
• 4 Clarinet Concerto, Op. 27: III. Allegro vivace 04:26
• Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958): Clarinet Concerto:
• 5 Clarinet Concerto: Part I 08:51
• 6 Clarinet Concerto: Part II 12:27
• 7 Clarinet Concerto: Solo Cadenza 03:03
• 8 Clarinet Concerto: Part III 04:21
• Total Runtime 01:01:11

Info for Nielsen & Lindberg: Clarinet Concertos

Seekers after extreme landscapes and rugged coastlines are well provided for in Scandinavia – as they are in its music. On his new album, Sebastian Manz engages with the clarinet concertos of the Danish composer Carl Nielsen and Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg. Both are well known for their elemental, abstract sound stuctures, summoning up the natural world of their homelands for listeners as if painting in sound.

We are soon drawn under the spell of the Scandinavian landscape: mountains and lakes, waterfalls, fjords and forests, long summer nights under the open sky. It can scarcely come as a surprise that the great composers of the Nordic lands – such as Edvard Grieg in Norway or Jean Sibelius in Finland – called upon music to portray nature. Contemporary composers may be less inclined to take refuge in the fields and woods, and yet the Clarinet Concerto of Magnus Lindberg, born in Helsinki in 1958, is pervaded by the spirit of Nature. Lindberg, described by The Times as one of the most important voices among 21st-century composers, took the podium in person to conduct this recording. Sebastian Manz took the opportunity to discuss details of the work with the composer and thereby refine his playing. The cadenza in the second half of the Clarinet Concerto offers him as the soloist the scope to indulge in a new, personal style and manner of interpretation.

Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto of 1928 gives Manz a coupling with another solo concerto from the Nordic nations, one that clarinettists consider to be part of their core repertoire. Nielsen’s tonal language can be described as a mixture of folk culture, courage to experiment and a return to older music traditions. Shot through with changes of mood and sharp contrasts, the work is not only breathtaking but places high demands on the exponent’s technique. The work’s spontaneous, eruptive outbursts represent a polar opposite to the sounds of the natural world that otherwise characterize the piece, recalling the screech of railway-carriage wheels and the roar of the city. This impressive work is conducted by Dominik Beykirch, acknowledged to be one of the outstanding new-generation composers of recent years.

These two clarinet concertos are complemented on the album by a chamber work of Carl Nielsen’s. Sebastian Manz chose the Serenata in vano, a “serenade in vain”, as a charming work from Nielsen’s pen. The composer wrote the piece in 1914 for a concert tour of Denmark, before turning to larger, more important projects. The first thing that captures the attention in the quintet is the unusual scoring, determined by the musicians who were on tour: clarinet, bassoon, horn, cello and double bass. The result is a darkly nuanced timbre in which the clarinet, as the highest-pitched instrument, takes the lead.

Sebastian Manz has joined forces with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie of Saarbrücken and Kaiserslautern to present three works that spirit us away into Nordic landscapes and paint pictures in sound despite all their musical complexity. Essential listening, not just for devotees of highbrow music!

Sebastian Manz, clarinet
David Fernandez Alonso, french horn
Marc Trenel, bassoon
Dominik Manz, cello
Lars Olaf Schaper, double bass
Deutsche Radio Philharmonie
Dominik Beykirch, conductor
Magnus Lindberg, conductor

Sebastian Manz
Manz delights the media as a musician “who bowls melodies and notes along in front of him with such agility in their colour and nuances, it is as if they were balls he was expertly juggling …” (SZ). His “overwhelming passion for music making [is combined] with technical perfection” (WAZ) – and the RHEINISCHE POST writes of his CD “In Rhythm: “… it swings and stimulates, refreshes and weeps, and you just cannot get enough of it …”.

His big breakthrough came with his sensational success at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in September 2008, where he won not only first prize in the Clarinet category, which had not been awarded for forty years, but also the coveted Audience Prize and other special prizes. In the “Duo Riul” with his partner Martin Klett at the piano, he had also won the German Music Competition just a few months previously. Sebastian Manz has since then been one of the most popular soloists and chamber musicians of the younger generation. Two ECHO Klassik awards have confirmed Sebastian Manz as one of the most sought-after soloists and chamber musicians of his generation. He has been solo clarinettist with the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart since 2010.

Sebastian Manz has so far performed as soloist at the Rheingau Music Festival and the Weilburg Schloss Concerts, with the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra of Stuttgart, with the Dresden Philharmonic, at the Konzerthaus in Vienna and with the Bern Symphony Orchestra; he has been on tour with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra of Heilbronn and the Dogma Chamber Orchestra, under conductors like Herbert Blomstedt, Sir Roger Norrington, Mario Venzago, Cornelius Meister, Eric Solen, Antonio Mendez, John Axelrod, Eugen Tzigane and Ruben Gazarian. In the field of chamber music he has been much in demand as a guest performer at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, the Mozart Festival in Würzburg, the Heidelberg Spring Music Festival, at the “Spannungen” Festival in the converted power station in Heimbach, at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. His musical partners include Herbert Schuch, Veronika Eberle, Daniela Koch, Ramón Ortega Quero, the Danish String Quartet, the Dover Quartet and the Lotus String Quartet. He was engaged for three years by the Konzerthaus in Dortmund as part of the “Junge Wilde” series, which he brought to a conclusion with a spectacular concert in December 2014.

In the 2015/2016 season Sebastian Manz will undertake a number of international guest tours to Japan, Brazil and Portugal and will be Artist in Residence with the Philharmonie Baden-Baden. He will also make his debut with the Hamburg Symphony and has again accepted an invitation from the Bergische Symphoniker ensemble, to play for the first time ever Magnus Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto, which has been hitherto considered unplayable. With his piano partner Martin Klett he will give recitals at a number of venues including Salzburg, Stuttgart and Kiel.

His discography now boasts 9 CDs, all of which impressively document his versatility and talent on the instrument and are impressive for their interesting choice of works comprising both standard repertoire and rarely heard works. His most recent recording with the Danish String Quartet compares the clarinet quintets of Robert Fuchs and Johannes Brahms.

Being the grandson of the Russian violinist Boris Goldstein and the son of two pianists, Manz's musical roots are in his German-Russian family background. He was born in Hanover in 1986 and began singing in a boys' choir at the age of six. He first learned the piano, which he plays very well, but soon concentrated on the clarinet after listening to Benny Goodman's recording of Carl Maria von Weber's E flat major Concerto, which fascinated him and awoke a longing for the instrument. Among his most important teachers and supporters were the acclaimed clarinettists Sabine Meyer and Rainer Wehle.

Alongside his concert work, Sebastian Manz has been active for some time in the “Rhapsody in School” organization founded by Lars Vogt, which is committed to bringing classical music into schools.

This album contains no booklet.