RSP Records RSP-17
“Modern classical music doesn’t have to be atonal or challenging. Rick Sowash continues to compose very accessible and enjoyable classical music. Just the other day my colleague Kimberly Powell played his Clarinet Concerto and found it melodic, and wasn’t surprised we received several inquiries about it, all positive.” — Rocky Lamanna, KWAX, Eugene, OR
Rick Sowash has been writing inventive, creative, evocative, and beautiful music for more than half-a century, with more than 600 musical compositions to his credit. He has also written eight books, the most recent titled “How Music Means.” Kickshaw Records is proud to present a new album of some of the composer’s voluminous output for clarinet and piano, performed by clarinetist Christopher Bade (BAY-dee) and pianist Greg Kostraba (kuh-STRAH-bah).
1. Beyond the Reach of Words (4:27)
“I think that the best titles are the ones that invite the listener in, offer an entrée. Here, come into this piece of music, listen, see if this expresses something about what the title seems to be hinting at. But coming up with a title like that is no small trick. Sometimes I have worked harder, it seems, struggling to name the baby than I did in writing the piece in the first place. So when I wrote this piece, Beyond the Reach of Words, and I couldn’t find a title that I thought expressed the state of mind I was trying to bring to listeners, I thought to myself, “This is just beyond the reach of words.” And then it struck me, that’s not a bad title.” – Rick Sowash
2-6. Sonata for Clarinet & Piano “Kassner Sonata” (18:05)
2. Winter Dawn (6:54)
3. Scherzo (2:26)
4. Largo (2:38)
5. Fugue (2:12)
6. Rondo Finale (3:55)
The Clarinet Sonata, and indeed this entire album, is dedicated to clarinetist and Sowash’s friend Kirk Kassner. who began pressing him a few years ago to write something deeply serious that he could play and share. Sowash continues, “So, I wrote this sonata. As I finished it, I sent it to him, and he loved it. He began practicing it, but he became unwell, and before he was able to perform it, his health sank rather quickly. Only two or three months after his diagnosis, he was gone, and had not had the chance to premiere the sonata.”
The inspiration for the opening movement, titled “Winter Dawn,” came early one morning as Rick was looking out at the winter scenery through the window of his house on the east side of Cincinnati. “I have a wonderful view of the sky and the horizon off to the east. I thought, what would be the right music for the coming of dawn over a bleak winter landscape? The bare black branches, a gray sky but gradually lightening—that would lend itself to the kind of depth that I wanted to achieve in this sonata.”
7-8. Two Homages (7:43)
7. Gelato per Dio (Ice Cream for God): Homage to Puccini (3:47)
8. Curly Prays: Homage to Richard Rodgers (3:56)
“I sometimes want to put on a hat, put on a mask, be someone else for a while. So I’ve written homages to perhaps a dozen composers who I greatly admire. My homage to Richard Rodgers on this album is a sincere homage, but it’s also poking fun a little bit at Rodgers and Hammerstein. And if you listen carefully to it, you hear little echoes of Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ peeking around the corner here and there. But at the same time, the middle section is very sincere. I picture this jaunty, funny cowboy finding a moment of reverence out on the prairie, Curly looks up at the stars and for a time he is humbled. He prays a prayer of gratitude. And then, boom, he’s back to his jaunty old self again.” – Rick Sowash
9. Peace Descends Like Snow (3:32)
10-17. Full Circle Suite (17:23)
10. The Owl and the Pussycat (3:05)
11. Twilight Turns Darker Blue (2:20)
12. The Passing of Buffalo Bill (1:35)
13. Waking at Night (1:31)
14. High-Bouncing Lover (0:52)
15. The Fat Cat on the Mat (2:57)
16. Sleep, Child, Lie Quiet (1:59)
17. Light is Her Step Variations (3:04)
18. Rondo Pastorale: Homage to Gerald Finzi (7:07)
An homage to one of Sowash’s favorite composers, Gerald Finzi. “I think Finzi is a wonderful composer, a lyrical, very English characteristic voice. His body of work is not large, and yet what there is, I just adore,” says Sowash. “I am not English, but I can strive to be lyrical, and I can emulate that combination of almost Baroque counterpoint that he has in the keyboard and then the singing melody in the clarinet. I would even go so far as to say that I’ve aspired to be an American Finzi. And I like to say “Huckleberry Finzi,” the American answer to Finzi, at least at certain moments in my composing. And so an homage seemed completely in order.”
19-24. Suite from “A College Town Diary” (13:55)
19. Cap & Gown Processional (3:10)
20. Romance for Valentine’s Day (2:02)
21. Scherzo for Holiday Breaks (1:56)
22. Eccentric Professor (1:38)
23. Waltz for Spring (2:15)
24. Commencement March (2:54)
