Flying-Bombs Didn't Put Him Off

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 294, 9 February 1945, Page 12

Flying-Bombs Didn't Put Him Off

Reginald Kell — Master Clarinettist

(Written for "The Listener’ by

D. W.

McKENZIE

clarinet of Reginald Kell, one of the world’s outstanding masters of this instrument. The gramophone authorities seem to have picked him for the job of systematically recording the masterpieces of clarinet music, Notable was the recent issue of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet with the Busch Quartet and just released in London is a recording of the Beethoven Trio, Opus 11, for clarinet, ’cello and piano. This last was recorded in the middle of the first flyingbomb attack on London and several times in the middle of it the players had to take cover in shelters from flying bombs which were falling near by. listeners often hear the

Reginald Kell is British born and trained. He was born at York in 1906 and won a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he is now a professor. When he was only 32 he was appointed a judge at the International Festival of Wood-wind Playing in Vienna, a signal honour in a centre of fine musicianship. In 1939 he distinguished himself in playing the Brahms and Mozart Quintets with the Busch Quartet at the International Festival of ' Music in Lucerne. He has been principal clarinet of nearly all the great London orchestras and as a.wartime measure is playing with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and spending a good deal of time giving concerts to troops. Kell’s playing is most notable for the limpid ease and the perfection of his phrasing. Listen to his records of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto-the faultless scale-playing and the rippling arpeggios have an almost liquid quality and the purity of his style is Mozart to perfection. One might say that Kell is to the clarinet what Leon Goossens is to the oboe. Three Reginald Kell recordings will be heard next week: A Mozart trio (3YA, Monday, February 12); the Mozart clarinet concerto (2YC, Wednesday; February 14); and the Brahms clarinet quintet (2YN, Thursday, February 15).