I knew the Sonatina for clarinet and piano by Joseph Horovitz many years ago, maybe in 1992. It was on a recording by the great Gervase De Peyer with the pianist Gwenneth Pryor (English Music for Clarinet and Piano). This year I got the sheet music and decided to study it, which I did with great pleasure because in addition to being a beautiful work, it is superbly written for our instrument. Further down you can listen and watch the version I recorded in June 2021 (click to watch the video). But before I leave you a brief biography of the composer and musical data of this beautiful work.
Joseph Horovitz was born in Vienna (Austria) on May 26, 1926, into a Jewish family that in 1938 had to emigrate to England fleeing from the Nazis. There he studied piano and languages at Oxford, and then entered the Royal College of Music in London to study composition with Gordon Jacob. Later he spent a year in Paris taking lessons with Nadia Boulanger. His career as a professional musician began in 1950 when he was appointed as a music director of the London theater company Bristol Old Vic. Later he was an active opera and ballet conductor, and toured Europe and the US. Since 1961, Horovitz has been teaching composition at the Royal College of Music. His works include sixteen ballets, two one-act operas, several concertos for string, wind, and percussion instruments, as well as a popular jazz concerto for harpsichord and orchestra. He composed a large number of works for wind ensembles and brass ensembles.
Horovitz is a composer of great versatility, graceful wit, and an enviable ability to communicate, both in his light and serious styles. In works such as the Clarinet Concerto (1957) he developed a synthesis of neoclassical jazz that he has since applied in many of his most successful works. His lighter works have not prevented him from composing in a deeper style: his choral works show the influence of Vaughan Williams, Holst and Delius, while his string quartets, in particular No. 5, contain an intensity based on convincing and a often challenging programmatic allusions. The Sonatina for clarinet and piano, wrote in 1981, is one of the works written as a result of his friendship with the clarinetist Gervase de Peyer. The two met at the Royal College of Music as students (de Peyer studied clarinet with Frederick Thurston), and later in Paris (where de Peyer studied with Louis Cahuzac). The work is dedicated to Horovitz's wife, Anna.
Horovitz offers a description of the Sonatina in the score:
"This Sonatina is cheerful and respects the traditional model of division into three movements. The first one, in classical sonata form, focuses on the mainly lyrical middle register of the clarinet over an undulating piano background. The second movement is an A-B-A lied structure that employs some of the wind instrument's low notes in a long cantilena over a slow chordal accompaniment. The last movement is a kind of rondo that alternates two themes in equal proportions, exploiting the high register of the clarinet. The harmonic language of the entire work is obviously tonal and, like most of my later compositions, the Sonatina is heavily influenced melodically and rhythmically by jazz and other popular music. It requires the same virtuosity on the part of both performers."
Source: Dissertation by Garrett Ray Jones (link)
RECORDING OF THE WORK:
Gabriel Blasberg (clarinet), Mohamed Shams (piano). Recorded in June 2021, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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