Miguel and I released an album yesterday on Backlash, with music by Bernstein, Berg and Geppert. I am very excited and happy about the result, and can honestly say the whole project has been an unadulterated joy from beginning to end. But again, such are the perks of making albums with your friends.
Despite my love of both Berg and Bernstein, it is David Geppert’s Sonata that has become the story of this production for me. Discovering the piece (and it has truly felt like a real discovery), has taken a long time, and, as is often the case when deciphering music by composers with whose work one is not yet familiar, it has been filled with wrong interpretations and many surprising moments of correction and musical recalibration. Going through a process like this is a special joy of mine, but it is hard to realise in an ideal way. First, the written music needs to be complicated and constantly rich enough that perfect reading is virtually impossible first time around. Then, and most important, the music needs to, after hours (and sometimes a concert or two) of misunderstood, complicated sound, reveal itself as something rich, nuanced, personal and above all: profoundly logical. It is hard to describe the intense joy of finding this real incarnation of a composers work after a somewhat clouded process.
I cannot overstate how much I have come to love this sonata. I believe it is easily among the very best works written for clarinet and piano. It is unbelievably rich and subtle in its harmonies, uncompromising in its attention to every voice. Above all, it is a profoundly brave and personal piece that never gives an inch proclaiming the aesthetic ideals and desires of its maker.
It took him over fifty year to write the piece (1949 - 2002). I would absolutely consider that time well spent.