In the middle of last year, 2020, I felt like going back to study this excellent piece that I had learned several decades ago, when I was a student at the National Conservatory in Buenos Aires with the great Mariano Frogioni, my teacher. Frogioni was a clarinetist very interested in covering other works in the repertoire besides the famous ones and in this context he suggested to me the "Capriccio" by Heinrich Sutermeister, a Swiss composer who lived between 1910 and 1995.
Photo: Hans Müller - per OTRS, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45282369
It is a work composed in 1946, which gives a lot of pleasure to play and also to listen to as a listener, but at the same time it is really complex to interpret in order to highlight the different materials it contains, very contrasting. As for the notes themselves, it presents difficult passages but they are not of "extreme" difficulty.
(First page of the work)
In this post you can see (below) the video I recorded at home on June 11, 2020 in a version without cuts or edits.
But first I want to share this small analysis of the work made by Karem Joseph Simon in 1985 for his thesis at the University of British Columbia:
"Heinrich Sutermeister's "Capriccio" (1946) was commissioned as a competition piece for the Genoa Conservatory. The work has ideal characteristics for a competition, with two contrasting ideas throughout the piece; one is sharp and incisive staccato articulation, the other is fluent and quiet, with legato passages, both are introduced in the opening phrase.n
The first theme is developed in the opening and closing sections of the work, while the second is developed in the middle section, therefore the form is ternary (ABA').
The rough idea is characterized by an energetic, fun and rough interpretation, through successions of agile staccato notes and embellished fast passages. The other theme is much more elegant and sweet in character, exhibiting a cantabile style with wide jumps and soft nuances.
There are many sudden changes in dynamics, meter, and character, demonstrated by the notations legatissimo, spirito, grazioso, giocoso, eleganza, ruvido, and amabile, all of which contribute to its "whimsical" character.
According to one critic, this Capriccio reflects the influence of Sutermeister's works for the cinema, and it would not be difficult to establish a history of it: the playful material would represent an impatient boy, contrasting with the calm material, suggesting an adorable mother. The whimsical temperament of the work seems to evoke the character of the clarinet parts in "Peter and the Wolf" (Prokofiev) and "The Antics of Till Eulenspiegel" (R. Strauss).
In the coda (meno mosso), the young boy shows signs of seriousness and determination, as the theme is divided and slowed down. But it culminates in the playful, whimsical character with which it began."
Finally, I leave you the video so you can appreciate this excellent work. Its duration is 6 minutes.