A Myaskovsky Clarinet Concerto?

[Theodore S.]

This is indeed a strange mystery! I'm having a look around on the internet, and now I have to wonder if anything but the fact it's a 3-movement concerto for clarinet and strings is correct, like the credited musicians. At the very least, it's very probably not by Nikolai Myaskovsky.

I did see that the conductor Vladimir Ponkin is online and has social media (his own website and a VK account) - perhaps he'd be able to help solve this mystery, considering part of it is under his own name, after all.

[eschiss1]

It might not be a concerto for clarinet and strings originally, either (This does not aid identification!)

[Christopher]

Hi @tuatara442442 - did you ever get to the bottom of this?

[tuatara442442]

No, I did not. I did not contact Mr. Ponkin. But I still doubt this is an arrangement of David Krivitsky's bass-clar. concerto. The Russian National Library lists a score in their possession
https://search.rsl.ru/ru/record/01001937823

[Greentiger]

Hello, I don't know if any of you read this thread anymore but I am hoping that you do. I am new here and only signed up to give an input on this question. I happened to discover this recording today whilst listening to some Miaskovsky and thought that a clarinet concerto by him seems a bit strange. On googling the recording I came upon this thread. So I was not wrong there is indeed a mystery. However after a little bit of thought I have come upon a potential answer, but I have no way of verifying it and perhaps someone here may be in a position to do so.
But interestingly someone here mentioned a likeness to Hindemith, which would tie in to the information that I have found. I personally thought the music sounded English.
I decided to ignore all the obvious information given on this clarinet concerto and focus purely on the rather bizarre additional piece of information, namely "Moove.T". I have discovered there was an English composer named Timothy Moore who did indeed write a "Concerto for Clarinet and Strings".
There is a biography given on Britishmusiccollection.org.uk which interestingly says the following:

"A renewed contact with a Russian-born schoolfriend Diana Miller, led to his organising visits to Britain for the Soviet Composers Union and for pupils from the Gnesin Music School (among them the young Yevgeny Kissin). This resulted in the re-establishment of relations between the Composers Union and the British Composers Guild after an interval of some 30 years. It also led to many performances and broadcasts of Moore's music in the Soviet Union and widespread recognition there.
His style of composition was individual and difficult to pigeonhole, owing something to Hindemith, the English madrigalists and Bach, as well as to jazz."

The Jazz comment certainly ties in with the third movement Rondo, and the article also mentions the similarities to Hindemith. What say you all? Can anyone verify?

[Greentiger]

I forgot to add that the British Music Collection website also indicates that the Timothy Moore clarinet concerto is approximately 15 minutes long, which is not far off the 17 minutes of this recording.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks for this contribution. Sounds decidedly plausible.

[eschiss1]

I think the Russian Music Collection on Brilliant Classics contains another example of an odd misattribution- a cello work (possibly by Milhaud or an arrangement of a well-known Milhaud work?) played by Rostropovich (iirc) under a different composer and title- so somehow this sort of misattribution-for-recording's-sake seems not unprecedented.

[tuatara442442]

Very intriguing strand of thought. Thank you for your hypothesis!

[Christopher]

This is more plausible than some might think: when russians are taught the Latin alphabet, there is a very weird way that they write lower-case r. It looks like a curved v! See the image below, though that doesn't totally capture it.  (Handwriting is a very strict thing there, almost all russians have identical handwriting in both Cyrillic and Latin.) So not inconceivably a russian could have written Moore T and someone else read it as Moove T.

[Christopher]

Where might one find the score of T Moore's concerto?

[Christopher]

An obituary on MusicWeb says:

Although he won some success as a composer; with a number of publications and broadcasts, the fact remains that he was probably better known in Russia than in Britain, and in his latter years he worked hard to try to achieve wider recognition in this country, something which he never quite succeeded in but richly deserved.

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Mar03/Moore_obit.htm

The Concerto for Clarinet and Strings is referenced here:
https://britishmusiccollection.org.uk/score/concerto-clarinet-and-strings-4

[Greentiger]

The Concerto for Clarinet and Strings is referenced here:
https://britishmusiccollection.org.uk/score/concerto-clarinet-and-strings-4

Yes I have just sent an email to the British Music Collection to see if I can get an answer. I guess I doubt they will spend the time on a bit of idle curiosity, but there is always a chance that they have interest as it might add a recording to their archives that they were unaware of.

[Christopher]

Another place to try could be the successor to Dartington Hall School where he seems to have spent most of his career.

According to wikipedia:

After the school's closure, a number of staff and students set up Sands School which still carries some of the principles that Dartington once had.

The Dartington estate also hosts the Dartington Music Summer School & Festival - which "was a department of the Dartington Trust. It was replaced in 2024 by ChoralFest"...these could all be avenues of enquiry maybe?

[Greentiger]

There is a Timothy Moore recording of his Brass Quintet here: https://www.editions-bim.com/composers/timothy-moore and if you compare it's movements 3 and 4 to the 2nd and 3rd of the concerto, I feel there are definitely some similarities........but maybe it's just me.