Clarinet concertos don't exactly crowd the repertoire. But there have been notable additions recently from Elliott Carter and John Adams, and the UK premiere of a new concerto by the prolific Finnish composer Einjuhani Rautavaara, written for Richard Stolzman and performed by him with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin, was potentially intriguing. A shame, then, that Rautavaara's score was by far the least edgy item in a programme otherwise involving composers and arrangers who have been dead for decades.
The concerto is dedicated to Stolzman "and the sound of his clarinet" - aptly, as that's pretty much what it has to offer us, served up on a bed of sumptuously thick but boringly safe orchestral accompaniment. As a concerto it is misnamed. In a true concerto there must be some sense of struggle; the solo line must convey something that the ensemble is initially unwilling or unable to say.
Here there are more resolutions than tensions, and even Stolzman's expressive, heroic playing couldn't stop the score sounding platitudinous. The combination of two chords used in the first movement is one that film composers discovered long ago can suggest a feeling of surprise and wonderment. But Rautavaara rocks between these chords over and over again; if this were film music, we'd see Stolzman swinging along an alpine pass encountering a splendid mountain vista around every corner - and registering goldfish-like surprise every time. This kind of wilful naivety is endemic in a score that cries, "Only kidding!" the moment there's even a hint that it might wrongfoot the listener.
We had already heard some excellent clarinet playing courtesy of the BBCSO's own people in Stravinsky's characterful eight-player arrangement of Sibelius's Canzonetta. And each element of the orchestra had its cameo in Walter Susskind's arrangement of Prokofiev's Visions Fugitives. Originally for piano, these 20 impressionistic, quirky miniatures, mostly lasting less than a minute each, are essentially Prokofiev's Pictures at an Exhibition, only the gallery is longer, the exhibits more closely hung and the exact images unrevealed.
After the Rautavaara, Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony seemed effortlessly substantial. In his successful attempt to avoid milking the slow third movement Slatkin didn't quite bring the magic out of the contrasts. But the second movement, had been a coiled spring - if this intensity and tautness had been maintained throughout the symphony the performance might have been lifted from competence to real excitement.
