Michael Berkeley's Clarinet Concerto, written for Emma Johnson in 1991, represents a new generation of this always-accessible composer's music. If my first reaction was to regret that Berkeley had not been inspired more by Emma Johnson's winning warmth, her ability to turn a phrase or point a rhythm with a sparkle all her own, and instead had focused on the instrument's abrasive side, I have quickly come to admire the piece's concentrated intensity. Over its 20-minute, single-movement span, it delves into searchingly painful emotions, directly inspired by the sufferings of Rudyard Kipling as a boy, the subject of the opera, Baa Baa Black Sheep, which Berkeley was writing at the time.
Not that the concerto should be regarded as just a spin-off from the opera. The baldness and aggression of the piece in its own right is established from the start, with the soloist thrusting home in a rhythmic pattern centring on one note, underpinned by elaborate timpani writing. It says much for Emma Johnson's concentration that she instantly compels complete attention. Though the writing involves a high proportion of stratospheric shrieking that reminds me of the expressionist style of Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies in the 1960s, and lyricism is at a premium, the clear structure of the piece leads the ear on. Berkeley in such one-movement works has been influenced, like so many composers, by the supreme example of Sibelius's Seventh Symphony, and here the long exposition section leads to a clear landmark on a high sustained note on the violins (track 1, 7'04''), before the fluttering notes of an ever more violent Vivo section begin. After a chopping sequence, not unlike Bernard Hermann's celebrated music for Psycho, the central Adagio follows (10'00''). Yet even that meditative Adagio brings only a temporary repose, leading to a final agonized shriek of pain (17'00''). Only then does Berkeley allow a brief, lyrical elegiac close, the more welcome for its delay.
That closing section leads directly on to the two other, much briefer, simpler works on the disc, what the composer himself regards as ''fitting pendants''. Pere du doux repos, a setting for unaccompanied baritone of a sonnet by the sixteenth-century French poet, Pontus de Tyard, carries logically on from the epilogue of the concerto. In turn the solo clarinet work, Flighting, grew from the song, bringing out further the lyrical side of Emma Johnson. Though this programme does not present the easy ride many will expect from this soloist and this composer, ASV are to be congratulated on an issue which presents them both so vividly in a new light, as characterful as ever. The players of the Northern Sinfonia under Sian Edwards provide dedicated accompaniment in the concerto, not least the brass and woodwind (including rival clarinettists), and the recording, made in a sympathetic hall in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, presents the piece with clarity and warmth.'