[Dixielandjazz] Benny Goodman's Classical side

[Stephen G Barbone]

NY Times - September 30, 2009 - By Steve Smith

Recalling Benny Goodman’s Classical Side


That the great clarinetist Benny Goodman, known as the King of Swing,  
had an enormous impact on jazz should go without saying. His influence  
as a performer was similarly potent among countless young aspirants  
who took up the clarinet in his wake. Goodman’s effect on classical  
music, if less far-reaching, was still substantial; on Saturday night  
at Zankel Hall, another outstanding clarinetist, David Shifrin,  
provided evidence in a program titled “The Classical Legacy of Benny  
Goodman.”

The concert, which was the opening event of Yale in New York, a  
consistently engaging Carnegie Hall series presented by the Yale  
School of Music and programmed by Mr. Shifrin, featured student  
musicians, alumni and faculty members working together in pieces  
associated with Goodman. The concert was also part of a weeklong  
tribute from Yale, where Goodman established his archive and where he  
was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1982.

In some cases, connections to Carnegie Hall — the site of a  
groundbreaking 1938 concert by Goodman’s big band — were just as  
important to the programming. Goodman intended to play the premiere of  
Poulenc’s Clarinet Sonata with the composer at the piano; but when  
Poulenc suddenly died, in January 1963, Goodman played the work with  
Leonard Bernstein at the piano during an April memorial concert at  
Carnegie. Here the clarinetist Chad Burrow and the pianist Amy I-Lin  
Cheng offered a bright, genial account.

Bartok’s “Contrasts,” commissioned by Goodman at the violinist Joseph  
Szigeti’s urging, also had its premiere at Carnegie Hall. The Atria  
Ensemble — the clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois, the violinist  
Sunmi Chang and the pianist Hye-Yeon Park — offered a dazzling  
performance, perfectly pitched between technical assurance and earthy  
gusto.

“Benny’s Gig,” a series of jazzy vignettes by Morton Gould, could  
scarcely make as strong an impression as the Poulenc and Bartok pieces  
surrounding it. Two young clarinetists, Mingzhe Wang and Justin  
O’Dell, and a bassist, Alex Smith, did honorable work in music that  
resonated with older men’s nostalgia. More striking was Gould’s  
“Recovery Music,” a tiny triptych for solo clarinet, vibrantly played  
by Maureen Hurd to open the concert’s second half.

“Rendezvous,” composed by Alan Shulman to replace Mozart’s Clarinet  
Quintet in a 1946 radio broadcast, combined elegant counterpoint and  
billows of Gershwinesque schmaltz in roughly equal measure. Paul Won  
Jin Cho, a stylish clarinetist, and the Jasper String Quartet handily  
managed both aspects.

Having spent the evening on the sidelines, Mr. Shifrin finally took up  
his clarinet as the soloist in Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, another  
important piece commissioned by Goodman. Working with a lean, polished  
string ensemble led by the violinist Ani Kavafian, Mr. Shifrin  
lovingly molded the concerto’s wistful melodies and dazzled in its  
exuberant flurries.