Edison Denisov

Like Brahms in his later years, Edison Denisov, the European-oriented composer firmly rooted in Russian-Siberian soil, developed a certain partiality to the tonal qualities of the clarinet. Eduard Brunner, clarinet virtuoso and former soloist of the Symhonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, got acquainted with Denisov's music in the mid 1960s, and has been playing Denisov's works regularly ever since. Brunner's performance of the Ode, a composition revealing an original "Russian" element but at the same time strongly influenced by the Darmstadt School then centered around Boulez and Stockhausen, was the first performance outside the Soviet Union. Two decades later on: the Clarinet Quintet of 1987 is fully in the tradition of classic-romantic quintets à la Mozart, Brahms or Weber; it is a composition "very much conceived with the clarinet as the starting point," continually increasing in compositional concentration as the movements proceed, becoming tighter and condensed towards the finale. The Clarinet Concerto "reveals in particular Denisov's strong symphonic inclination." The rhapsodic first movement is followed by a slow movement of great tonal beauty, a veritable lyrical swansong: grand, deeply moving music.