Update Title: 0BE9BA7D-32AF-468D-B226-B37A300528FC

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My venture into the world of the bass clarinet came about after hearing concert clarinetist Dennis Smylie play in one of the New York Philharmonic's "New Horizons" programs several years ago.  I became interested in the sonic resources of this instrument and decided to write a "mood piece" concentrating on the bass clarinet's poetential for spooky lyricism.  The initial project grew into a three-movement concerto, each movement having some qualities of a tone poem based on images of night.

In "Moonrise Soliloquy" (subtitled La luna ascensa), the rising of the full moon is suggested musically by a series of shimmering tone clusters that ascend slowly throughout the movement.  The bass clarinet's soliloquy also ascends, starting from the bottom of the instrument's register and becoming increasingly more active, until it is overtaken by a B-flat clarinet playing offstage.  Responding to its "alter ego" as to the voice of a distant night bird, the soloist and yet a third clarinet engage in some imitative dialogue.  Then, as the "moon" reaches its apex in a cluster of high, string harmonics, the bass clarinet slips back down into the depths from whence it came.
In Movement II, "Meteor Showers," the orchestral colors are limited to the dark sounds of the drums and the "twinkling" sounds of the celesta and suspended cymbals (and a single strategically-placed pizzicato note on a solo violin), while the bass clarinet plays a slow, poignant melody emphasizing the upper regions of the instrument's range.

Twice, the intensity of the soloist's melody activates are-like passages of rapid figures in the celesta, with the second are dissipating in a sparkling shower, out of which drop the first four notes of the bass clarinet's theme in the first movement.

"Journey Through a Summer Night" opens with the insistent rasp of a night insect, the katydid, simulated here by sandpaper blocks, and later, guiro and claves.  I thought of this movement as a whirlwind nocturnal flight through natural surroundings--forests of looming pines and moonlit fields--with the intrusion of the katydid rhythm becoming increasingly insistent.  Other night images from the preceding movements reappear in a shifting kaleidoscope of contrapuntal textures.  In true concerto tradition, the instrumental forces unite and separate, with several themes vying with the new, rambunctious motive of the bass clarinet for prominence. --Ann Callaway

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