Bay Area Favorites. When two of America’s most distinguished artists formed a duo in 2004, it was news. The Manasse/Nakamatsu Duo, comprised of clarinetist Jon Manasse and pianist Jon Nakamatsu, immediately established itself on some of the country’s most prestigious series: New York City’s Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Washington’s Dumbarton Oaks and National Gallery of Art, Brookings Chamber Music Society.

Their debut CD in 2008 was equally a hit: Almost immediately, The New York Times exclaimed, “… their partnership is complete. Harmonia Mundi’s production is impeccable, capturing such disparate instruments in full color and a lifelike perspective.”

To date, the artists have commissioned John Novacek’s Four Rags for Two Jons and Paquito D’Rivera’s The Cape Cod Files. Subsequently expanded and orchestrated by the composer, The Cape Cod Concerto received its world premiere in May 2011 by Symphony Silicon Valley.

Jon Nakamatsu and Jon Manasse both have highly regarded reputations.  Jon Manasse served as the principal clarinetist of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and is a renowned musician. The Bay Area’s love for “our own” Jon Nakamatsu is legend: Jon Nakamatsu grew up in San Jose and graduated from Stanford University and his wife teaches at Saratoga High School. From his rise in 1997, when he was awarded the Gold Medal at the Tenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the people of Silicon Valley have been among his most ardent fans. We are always thrilled to bring him to our stage, and continue to hear from our patrons that he is always a thrill to hear.

1. Allegro appassionato
2. Andante un poco Adagio
3. Allegretto grazioso
4. Vivace

The great classic-Romantic composer Brahms originally planned to retire after completing his String Quintet No. 2 in G Major (“Prater”), Op. 111, in 1890. However, on a journey to Meiningen early the next year, he was inspired to take up the pen again after hearing performances of works by Weber, Mozart, and Spohr performed by clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld (1856–1907). Brahms was impressed by the beauty and tone of the clarinet, and by Mühlfeld’s musicianship and ability to move easily between the instrument’s registers. In quick succession, Brahms completed the Clarinet Trio in A Minor, Op. 114 and the Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115, both in 1891. In 1894 during his annual retreat to Bad Ischl, he completed the two Clarinet Sonatas, Op. 120 (transcribing the two sonatas for viola in 1895). The two sonatas were the last chamber works Brahms completed before his death. All four works have become a vital part of the clarinet’s repertoire.

The Sonata in F Minor, Op. 120, No. 1 demonstrates how intimately Brahms had come to understand the capacity of the clarinet and also reflects his tendency to expand and reinvent classical forms. Whereas previous works for clarinet typically gave the melodies to the soloist, Brahms treats the clarinet and piano as more or less equal partners in dialogue.

The sonata is laid out in a carefully planned four-movement structure. A dark and atmospheric first movement is organized in a concise, but thematically rich sonata form, with no less than four distinct musical ideas in the exposition and an intense, dramatic development section. The coda, marked Sostenuto ed espressivo, is gloriously inspired, and ends quietly in the parallel major key. The songlike slow movement and the rustic Austrian Ländler third movement that serves as something of an intermezzo (it is not really a scherzo) are both in ternary form and set in the relative major key, A-flat, with occasional excursions into other, and sometimes distant, keys. Having used the four-flat signature for the first three movements, Brahms turns in the fourth movement, an exuberant and extroverted altered rondo that effectively balances the weight of the first movement, to the parallel major key—a key structure he had never exploited before in a minor-key chamber work.

Composed between 1830 and 1831, the Grande polonaise brillante in E-flat major was initially written for piano and orchestra. In 1834, Chopin wrote the Andante spianato in G major for solo piano, and in 1836 joined the two works together with a short martial interlude. Chopin’s emphasis on the piano writing allows a solo piano performance of the combined work. The Andante is quiet, melodic, and nocturnelike, drawing its listeners into a dreamlike state before the Polonaise interjects. The Polonaise is marked forte and espressivo, and almost demands that the pianist deploy every virtuosic talent he or she possesses. It is a show-stopping piece, and the ending coda brings the work to a dazzling close.

Cuban-born Paquito D’Rivera, clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer, the winner of five GRAMMY awards, composes and plays both Latin jazz and classical music. He studied in the 1960s at the Havana Conservatory of Music, and while on tour in Spain in 1981, sought asylum in the United States. He is a founding member and co-director of the ensemble Irakere, which performs a mixture of jazz, rock, classical, and traditional Cuban music; together the group was awarded a GRAMMY in 1979. D’Rivera has recorded an astounding 30 solo albums, and in 1991 he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from Carnegie Hall for his contributions to Latin music. In 2018 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Musical Arts from the Manhattan School of Music.

As a composer, D’Rivera has won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition; his compositions reflect his wide-ranging influences.

D’Rivera’s The Cape Cod Files was commissioned in 2009 for the Manasse/Nakamatsu Duo by the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival to celebrate the festival’s 30th anniversary. The Clarinet calls the four-movement suite “a major work that is technically and rhythmically challenging and an engaging merging of jazz, popular, and classical elements.” Mr. Manasse will perform the third movement, “Lecuonerías,” written for solo clarinet. The movement begins with an exotic, dark, and quasi-Phrygian scale that runs up and down the registers of the instrument before adopting more joyful and boisterous tones. The movement features improvisations around some of the melodies written by one of the foremost Cuban composers, pianist extraordinaire Ernesto Lecuona (1895–1963)

American pianist, saxophonist, composer, arranger, conductor, and four-time GRAMMY winner Gordon Goodwin has risen to prominence with his big band, The Big Phat Band, in which he plays piano, tenor and soprano saxophone, and for which he provides all the music charts. The band performs a wide variety of swing, funk, Latin, film, and concert music, releasing six albums to date. Goodwin has scored dozens of hit films and television programs, and while working for Warner brothers, won three Emmy awards. In 2004, he won a GRAMMY for Best Instrumental Arrangement for the film The Incredibles, and he won another GRAMMY in 2012 for his instrumental arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. He has performed with a wide range of artists, including Chick Corea, Mel Tormé, and Ray Charles, and has written two string quartets for Quartet San Francisco.

Goodwin’s Four Views for Clarinet and Piano was commissioned in 2012 by Vandoren by DANSR Inc. for the Manasse/Nakamatsu Duo. The first movement features virtuoso double-tonguing; the second, rapid-fire trading of bits of melody between the instruments; and the third seems to bear the influence of film music of the 1990s.
Goodwin’s philosophy? “I have one responsibility and that is to write music that sounds good to me … music that has integrity.”

Award-winning pianist John Novacek has toured the world, performing over 40 concerti from Bach to Barber with the world’s leading orchestras, taking the stage in venues from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to Wigmore Hall, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and the great concert halls of Japan. As a chamber musician, Novacek appears with such renowned artists as Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, and Leila Josefowicz, and has over 140 chamber works in his active repertoire. He appears regularly at leading festivals such as Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, BBC Proms, and Verbier. He has given world premieres of works by such composers as John Adams, George Rochberg, and John Williams, and has recorded over 30 CDs of solo and chamber works, including many contemporary and original compositions. Novacek is a Steinway Artist and holds a master’s degree from Mannes School of Music.

Novacek’s own compositions have been performed by soloists, duos, quartets, quintets, full symphony orchestras, and by such renowned groups as The Three Tenors. The composer has made a particular study of ragtime—one of America’s most original musical genres, known for its syncopated or “ragged” rhythms—both as composer and performer.

Novacek’s Four Rags for Two Jons was commissioned in 2006 by the Manasse/Nakamatsu Duo. The artists will perform the fourth movement, “Full Stride Ahead.” The work opens with triadic clarinet flourishes rudely interrupted by jolting dissonances from the piano. Soon the two instruments join together in a riotous romp, the pianist playing bouncing, off-the-beat, jumping left-hand chords reminiscent of stride piano, and the clarinet mocking the piano with blaring blasts and glittering trills. Both instruments traverse madly up and down the scale in a virtuosic wild ride, punctuated by shouts of joy from the performers. The work seemingly comes to an end with a prolonged jazzy tremolo seventh chord, only to be followed by a quick cadenza-like descent from the clarinet and a final glissando from the piano.