Tonight my amateur orchestra is going to have a bash through Mahler’s 5th. It’s just a bit of end-of-term fun as it’s not the sort of piece we could present seriously in a concert, although we shall play it to the best of our ability. (Getting enough players for a proper performance would be difficult for a start.)

Last Sunday we held an afternoon concert; one of those family things which involved some single movements from works. At least our orchestra is quite well proportioned: 8 first violins, 9 seconds, 5 violas, 7 cellos, 2 basses, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, 1 tuba, 4 percussionists, with no unnecessary doubling, which sometimes happens in amateur orchestras in order to let people have a go. (There was also a keyboard player to take the harp parts.)

I’ll just mention the Berlioz and Smetana. We played the March to the Scaffold (translated curiously as Stake in our copies) only and it was preceded by snippets and explanations of what was going on. I know that some bars have literal interpretations but I think the movement is diminished if every bar is taken to represent something specific. The piece is in B flat so the B flat clarinet would have been the obvious choice for Berlioz but he calls for the C clarinet, which I and my co-clarinettist both have. It is a shrewd choice as the slightly more shrill tone depicts the horror better and I think it should always be used for that piece whenever possible.

Vltava or The Moldau by Smetana also uses the C clarinet at times but I think that was more for convenience. We still used the C, though, rather than transpose at sight as I think most players would do, as we don’t often get the chance to use them! There’s scarcely space for the clarinets to breathe in that piece and the night time scene is a bit of a killer, with about 60 bars of continuous arpeggios (yet I can’t even hear them on my recording).

Mahler’s 5th also calls for C clarinets and he is certainly going get them tonight!

Being third-class Furtwängler himself... Oo sorry, that's mean.


I reckon he's acknowledging by that very action that he knows he's not going to get a C clarinet!