David Krakauer, ‘able to go anywhere
with his clarinet,’ plays with quartet

By John Mark Rafacz

Clarinetist David Krakauer, a classical player and specialist in klezmer music, joins the Orion String Quartet, an American ensemble known for its cutting-edge programming, to perform Magyar Madness, a work by Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer David Del Tredici, in a concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, September 23. The presentation at Penn State’s Schwab Auditorium also includes works by Hugo Wolf, Osvaldo Golijov, and Ludwig von Beethoven.

“Krakauer is connected with something deep, mysterious, and timeless,” writes Bill Kilkowski in Jazziz magazine. “It’s as ancient as the sound of the Shofar (ram’s horn), … as penetrating as the sound of his clarinet hero Sidney Bechet, yet as modern as the post-Trane/Dolphy school of improvising that is lapped up by young hipsters at downtown venues. … You’ve got one extremely gifted, amazingly versatile, and uncommonly open-minded virtuoso, willing and able to go anywhere with his clarinet.”

The Center for the Performing Arts, through its membership in the Music Accord national chamber music presenter consortium, co-commissioned Magyar Madness.

“Any doubts that romanticism still stirs in the modern composer’s breast were put to rest … when the Orion Quartet and clarinetist David Krakauer turned in a performance of David Del Tredici’s Magyar Madness that nearly outdid Schubert in lush, sweeping expressiveness,” writes a Washington Post critic. “It’s a tour de force that explores every color of the clarinet and then some.”

Del Tredici, considered the leading Neo-Romantic composer of our time, is scheduled to be at the Penn State debut of his work.

“Del Tredici,” said the great Aaron Copland, “is that rare find among composers—a creator with a truly original gift. I venture to say that his music is certain to make a lasting impression on the American musical scene. I know of no other composer of his generation who composes music of greater freshness and daring, or with more personality.”

The program at Schwab also features the five musicians performing K’vakarat by Golijov, a contemporary composer raised in an eastern European Jewish community in Argentina. The quartet—sibling violinists Daniel and Todd Phillips, violist Steven Tenenbom, and cellist Timothy Eddy—is also scheduled to perform Italian Serenade by Hugo Wolf, a nineteenth-century Austrian, and Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59, No. 2, Razumovsky by Beethoven.

Whether he’s playing classical, Eastern European Jewish klezmer, jazz, or avant-garde improvisation, Krakauer garners praise for his talent and daring. As one of the leaders in a new wave of klezmer, Krakauer tours the world with his popular Klezmer Madness! ensemble. He also appears as a guest soloist with well-known classical ensembles. Recent collaborations have included the Tokyo String, Kronos, Emerson String, and Lark quartets and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. Krakauer was part of the Aspen Wind Quintet for eight years.

The Orion, formed in 1987, performs more than fifty concerts each year in venues across the world. Quartet members serve on the faculties of the Mannes College of Music, Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, Queens College, Rutgers University, and the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

“Magyar Madness is a thirty-five minute clarinet quintet in three movements of wildly varying lengths,” writes Del Tredici. “The first, ‘Passionate Knights,’ is eleven minutes; the second, ‘Content­ment (Interlude),’ a chaste four; and the finale, ‘Magyar Madness,’ a whopping twenty minutes long.”

The seed for Magyar Madness was planted when Krakauer, after hearing a performance of another piece written by Del Tredici, sought out the composer to praise his work.     

“[Del Tredici] said, ‘I’ve been thinking about writing a piece of chamber music. I’ve written song cycles, I’ve written orchestral music, but I really haven’t written that much chamber music,’” recalls Krakauer, speaking by phone from New York City. “And I said, ‘Well, if you’re going to write chamber music, then you ought to write a clarinet quintet.’”

Tredici liked the idea so Krakauer, excited about the prospect, spoke to his manager about it. “She immediately started calling different presenters around the country. And then they were talking about Music Accord,” he says. “We contacted the Orion. And then, within a couple of months, we had everything up and running and going. It was really quite miraculous, actually.”

The clarinetist initially thought Del Tredici might be able to write a chamber music work that incorporated klezmer elements.

“I got together with David and I gave him some recordings of my band Klezmer Madness! and said, ‘What do you think of this? Is there anything that inspires you in any way?’ He listened to the music, and he said, ‘Well, I have no connection to klezmer. I don’t even think I would know where to begin writing a piece with any klezmer influence,’” Krakauer relates. “[But] he said, ‘I could write you a piece that has that influence of Romantic music that’s inspired by Hungarian music.’” 

That’s where the word Magyar comes in. It’s the Hungarian word for “Hungarian.”

“As the king of neo-Romantic music, this was an obvious jumping off point for him. Basically, the piece is extremely Romantic, but I think that it’s wild and over the top,” Krakauer says. “What makes it new and different, I think, is that it is Romanticism that an audience that loves Brahms etc. is going to really relate to. But it’s over the top, and it’s crazy, and it’s almost like a huge, crazy dream sequence in a Romantic language. So that indeed is Magyar madness. It’s a crazy kind of confrontation, this Romantic Hungarian-inspired music.”

While Magyar Madness is a show piece for a clarinet virtuoso, Krakauer insists it does not relegate the Orion to a supporting role. “In a certain way it’s beautiful writing for a clarinet, but it truly is great writing for a quintet,” he says. “It’s a great ensemble piece. It’s a tour de force for the Orion Quartet, as well. He takes this sort of Hungarian theme, and he augments it, he diminishes it, he plays with it. It just carries through. It’s quite something.”

Magyar Madness does not incorporate klezmer, which means “instrument of song.”

“I suppose it’s a kind of classical piece where I’m encouraged or allowed to let my wilder side out a little bit,” Krakauer says, “but there really is no klezmer influence, unlike the other piece—Golijov’s K’vakarat. … Osvaldo says it’s for klezmer clarinet and string quartet.”

The K’vakarat is the last paragraph of a traditional prayer that epitomizes the central theme of the Jewish High Holy Days. “The K’vakarat is a cantorial piece, part of the [Rosh Hashanah] New Year’s service. And so that piece has klezmer …  and you also hear a little bit in the cadenza in the middle of it the sound of the Shofar—the ram’s horn—that’s played on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And so that piece has all of these Jewish sounds.”

This year Rosh Hashanah, a two-day holiday, begins at sundown on September 29—less than a week after the Penn State performance.

Golijov, who won wide notice in 2000 for his composition Passion According to Saint Mark, is Loyola Professor of Music at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massa­chusetts. He also teaches at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Boston Conservatory.

“In our increasingly interconnected world, the multicultural music of Osvaldo Golijov speaks in a voice that is powerful yet touching, contemporary yet timeless” writes Richard E. Rodda in his program notes for K’vakarat. “Golijov’s parents, a piano teacher mother and a physician father, emigrated from Russia to Ar­gentina, where Osvaldo was born on December 5, 1960, in La Plata (thirty miles from Buenos Aires) into a rich artistic environment in which he was exposed from infancy to such varied musical experiences as classical chamber music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the tango nuevo of Astor Piazzolla.”

In the early 1980s, Golijov studied composition at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, then came to the United States to do doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Golijov’s works, with their syntheses of European, American, and Latin secular cultures and their deep spirituality drawn from both Judaism and Christianity, have brought him international notoriety and, in 2003, a coveted MacArthur Foundation Genius Award,” Rodda notes. “He was named Musical America’s 2005 Composer of the Year … .”

Artistic Viewpoints, an informal moderated discussion featuring a visiting artist, is offered in Schwab Auditorium one hour before the performance and is free for ticket holders.

The Norma and Ralph Condee Chamber Music Endowment underwrites chamber music presentations at the Center for the Performing Arts.

 

	Orion String Quartet © Lois Greenfield, 2006
	David Krakauer Photo credit: Bogdan Krezel