Clarinet debut: Romie de Guise-Langlois

For her Astral Artists recital debut, clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois arranged a program that combined new music with a historical survey. She commissioned two beautiful, highly creative new works for the event and teamed the premieres with three pieces that sketched in the development of the clarinet repertoire from Brahms to Bartok.

The first premiere on the program had originally been titled It's Raining in Syria, and it's listed that way in the program booklet that Astral prepares in advance of the season. Composer Kinan Azmeh subsequently renamed it A Scattered Sketchbook, presumably because the original title sounded like a reference to the current civil war in his native country.

Azmeh is a clarinetist and a graduate of Julliard and the Damascus High Institute of Music, not to mention the Damascus School of Electrical Engineering. His revised title refers to the true subject of his piece: the musical scenes and influences he has encountered on his travels.

Behind the audience

Sketches opens with a bit of staging. Violinist Kristin Lee stood in the front of Trinity Center's hall, playing short figures that suggested the sound of Middle Eastern and Indian instruments. The clarinet answered from behind the audience, with a deep, sonorous melody that added another suggestion of Middle Eastern music and instrumentation.

The first movement casts the violin in an unusual role as an accompanying instrument. The violinist spends most of her time creating simple figures, much the way bass players normally accompany more glamorous instruments. It's a subordinate role, but it looked like it required tight discipline and close attention to Lee's partner.

In the second section, the players reversed roles and the pulses of the clarinet provided a soft drum that accompanied the violin. Later, the duo launched into a kind of Central European dance, complete with frantic fiddling. Altogether, the five sections of A Scattered Notebook run through a demanding, continuously absorbing kaleidoscope of clarinet and violin styles and techniques.

Memories of pregnancy

The second premiere was a suite for clarinet and piano by the clarinetist's father, Jerome Langlois, a composer and musician whose résumé includes film and TV sound tracks, along with chamber and symphonic music. Its overall title, Te Souviens-tu?, means "Do you remember?"; the titles of its three sections refer to a trip to the islands when the composer's wife was pregnant with the future source of the commission. It's a poetic subject, poetically evoked.

The opening section, "Music Box," avoids the temptation to tinkle and beautifully suggests half-heard sounds. The third section, "The Ocean," begins with the breezy cheeriness of the beach and ends with the majesty of the deeps. The entire piece displays a composer with a talent for producing not only clarinet melodies but a talented clarinetist as well.

In the opening movement of the Brahms sonata that ended the first half, de Guise-Langlois produced a clarinet line that sounded too cool to my ear. I missed the warmth and poignancy that I hear in the Brahms performances that suit my personal taste. Pianist Andrea Lam communicated more rapport with the Brahmsian spirit.

But the second movement sounded genuinely moving; and when they shaped the colors and melodies of the Debussy sonata that followed the intermission, both musicians played as if they spoke a familiar language.

Three survivors

De Guise-Langlois was the afternoon's star, and her tone, control and artistic vision proved she fully deserves the support that Astral gives the young musicians who survive its rigorous selection process. But her two partners were also Astral Artists who'd survived the same process.

The three young musicians ended the afternoon with a trio that explores the clarinet's potential and highlights the distinctive voices of all three instruments: Bartok's Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano. It was a good choice for a finale, and they gave it an exceptionally lively performance.