Copland's Clarinet Concerto was written for Benny Goodman, and I hope that Goodman's own CBS recording, with Copland conducting, scheduled to be issued on CD will, as the historical document it undoubtedly is, appear before too long. Gary Gray approaches the score respectfully: the haunting opening section reveals impressive technical control and a cool, suave tone It's the livelier, jazzy music later on that needs handling with less deference: Gray is wry rather than ribald, and the orchestral accompaniment could have been given more rhythmic lift and bite. The recorded sound, as throughout the disc, is acceptable, if rather on the dry side.
A tendency to caution and understatement is also evident in Gray's performance of the Arnold concerto, a substantial piece completed in the same year as Copland's, 1948. A bolder, more button-holing manner might have brought its characteristic contrasts of the dour and the delicate more vividly to life. In this account, both the opening Allegro and the slow movement tend to meander, but the pungent finale, in which Arnold isn't afraid to work a very simple basic idea hard so that menace keeps geniality at bay, does at last generate the necessary heat. (In the notes, the concerto's second and third movements are surrealistically misprinted as Allegro con moto and Andante con fuoco!)
The two shorter works are nothing if not well contrasted. Lutoslawski's Dance Preludes, receiving their third airing on disc in recent months (the other two are by Eduard Brunner—Philips 416 817-1PH; (D 416 817-2PH, 8/87; and Thea King—Hyperion A6 215; (D CD 66215, 1/88), are neither sparkling nor sombre enough: this sounds more like a run-through than a fully-characterized performance. The Rossini Variations may seem incongruous at first in this twentieth-century company, but they offer Gray the chance to reveal a nice line in finespun soft tone, as well as all the necessary fluency in Rossini's lively passage-work. A coupling of this piece with music by Weber or other early romantics might have suited Gray's talents better.'