M. BENNETT Duo for Bass Clarinet, Duo for Flute and Piano; Nursery Song and Variations for Bass Clarinet; Trio for Clarinet, Viola, and Cello—Gerhardt Koch, clarinet; Matthew Bennett, clarinet, bass clarinet, clarinet; David Korevaar, piano; David Bursack, viola; Wendy Sutter, cello; MUSICIANS SHOWCASE RECORDINGS, MS1032 (63:11)
When the composer’s program notes open with the statement, “The following guide to the music may be ignored with impunity,” you know you are going to be in trouble if you don’t read them. Taking Bennett at his word, I sat down and simply listened to his music, taking the whole disc at face value and largely enjoying the experience. When you do get down to reading the booklet, you discover the Matthew Bennett has spent much of his life at the sharp edge of commercial music, and he knows full well the parameters of listener accessibility. Born in Titusville, Pennsylvania, Bennett graduated from Indiana University in saxophone performance. He later received tuition in composition and completed his clarinet and flute studies. His playing career has been diverse, taking him into symphony orchestras, jazz groups, big bands, Broadway musicals, and the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra. Now living in New York, Bennett is building his catalog of compositions, his earliest printed work being the Duo for Clarinet and Bass Clarinet. In four short movements, it does contain moments of dissonance, but is essentially a melodic score of easy attraction, his skillful handling and juxtaposition of the two instruments being derived from the composer’s deep knowledge of the clarinet family.
That work dates from 1986, and displays a creative ease. Ten years later the Duo for Flute and Piano displays a much more self-conscious wish to produce an interesting score. It contains a central fugue that marks Bennett's first attempt to come to terms with the atonality of Schoenberg. The subject contains 23 notes in two tone rows of twelve notes, with one note shared. As the movement progresses you can almost visualize Bennett working out the complexity of the task he has set for himself. Academically it may have interested him, but it comes as a welcome relief when he returns to his more natural self in the busy and highly inventive finale. Second thoughts on the work minus the Schoenbergian affliction would seem a priority. The short Nursery Song from 1993 provides a charming interlude bef0ore we embark on the 1990 Trio for clarinet in Bb, with viola and cello. Casting the trio in four movements, the last almost as long as the sum of the other three, Bennett is here experimenting with the combination of atonality and tonality sharing in the same overall musical structure. By and large it works out, the choice of instruments providing the unusual low-pitched sounds, with the composer 9in total command of the medium in which he is working. The result is a very modern idiom, and yet so fascinating in texture that it makes an immediate impact.
In his annotation Bennett talks of his attempt to face Bartók and his one bar fling with Minimalism; his discussion on the use of so many musical devices is so extensive that it becomes a treatise on his art of composition. To the listener it is the result that really matters, each of his works taken in isolation defining a musician with a fresh and original mind. It will be interesting to see to which of his many styles he eventually chooses to take him forward.
The extreme technical difficulties of the Trio will tax any ensemble, a fact that emerges from these recording sessions. Elsewhere the performers are fully in command of the music, Bennett’s flute solo in the duo having a sparkling quality, his agility meeting his own demanding requirements as a composer. In the remaining works he plays bass clarinet, moving to Bb clarinet for the Trio. He is joined by two fine New York-based musicians, David Bursack and Wendy Sutter, their intonation rigorously tested by Bennett’s unusual harmonies. The whole is packaged in a clear and well-balanced recording.
David Denton, Fanfare; November/December 2000
