BLAZE: Clarinet Quartet Concerto (2024)

Commissioned by Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz,
Premiered 17th January 2025 in Mannheim Germany
Conducted by Michael Francis, with the German Clarinets (Sebastian Lastein, Gerhard Krassnitzer, Anne Fuhrmann und Julius Kircher)

c. 16”00 (2222 2200 2p + timp, strings + solo Clarinet Quartet)

Programme Notes

c. 16 minutes, in four movements

The first thought of writing a concerto for four instruments of the same timbre, was really exciting to me. It provided both an opportunity as well as a challenge, as the different clarinets can blend together in such a way to create a unifying and coherent texture, though this can also pose a challenge for those very same reasons. While thinking about, and planning this piece (before putting pencil to paper), images kept coming to mind of the artwork of Bridget Riley, whom I’ve been inspired by for many years. Her “op art” makes use of very simple colours, patterns and textures. In many cases, her black and white paintings, while colourless, seem exceptionally colourful and dynamic to me. It was one image in particular that I kept coming back to in relation to this Concerto for Four Clarinets, which was her 1962 work “Blaze”. 

“Blaze” (image below) truly struck me as a piece that I wanted to ‘translate’ into music, and I knew it had to be this piece of music. I find the work bold, hypnotic, but also graceful with its curves crafted through straight lines. This Concerto for Clarinet Quartet is based on this piece, alongside more broadly, Rileys’ extended body of work.

I wanted the piece to be in four movements, as we have four soloists, and this felt like the right structure for this piece. I knew very early on that I wanted an entire movement (albeit the shortest one) to be solely for the quartet. It would essentially be an extended cadenza that I felt was needed to showcase all four of the soloists in the concerto.

My idea for the structure, is that the four different movements simply explore the different ways you can observe, and/or experience this piece of art. You can shift the focus of your eyes to ‘zoom out’, where you see the overview, the ‘big picture’ which has slight movement within it while you do this. Alternatively you can look more closely at how the straight lines join together to create the many layers of the spiral, which shows you a different type of illusion, and reveals more movement as well as disorientation. You can also see the painting as a series of circles, among so many other ways. These many ways to experience the piece informed the contrasting movements, as I found it such a versatile work of art to stare at, with many dimensions to experience it.  

The members of The German Clarinets have really inspired and informed “BLAZE”. They are such animated and dynamic players, and I wanted to bring this out, and emphasise this in the piece to create something fiery and exciting.

Huge thanks to the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalzfor commissioning this piece, The German Clarinets and Michael Francis for making it happen.