Flying Solo – Music for Solo Clarinet
Janet Hilton – clarinet
Janet Hilton celebrates her career of more than 50 years with a full album of music for solo clarinet. The music for unaccompanied clarinet is rich and varied. This disk celebrates the wonderful sonority of the clarinet, the instrument whose colours and expressiveness are compared by many to those of the human voice, qualities in Janet’s playing that inspired the Financial Times to comment on its ‘rare lightness and grace, shaped with the freedom of a great singer.’
Janet Hilton has had a close association with many of the featured composers. Malcolm Arnold was a friend, who chose her to record his first clarinet concerto and also wrote his Octet for her. John Mayer was a colleague at Birmingham Conservatoire, where she gave the first performance of Sargam, here receiving its premiere recording. Edwin Roxburgh and Mark Anthony Turnage, like Janet, are closely associated with the Royal College of Music.
The CD includes music by other British composers, Richard Rodney Bennett, Lennox Berkeley and Gordon Crosse, by French composers Henri Tomasi and Louis Cahuzac and of would not be complete without the classics of the clarinet repertoire by Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messaien.
- Arnold: Fantasy for Clarinet Op.87
- Edwin Roxburgh: Wordsworth Milniatures
- Messaien: Quatuor Pour la Fin du Temps; Abime de Oiseaux
- Anthony Turnage: 2 Memorials
- Gordon Crosse: A year and a Day
- Lennox Berkeley: Three Pieces for Clarinet
- Stravinsky: Three Pieces for Clarinet
- Rodney Bennett: Sonatina for Clarinet Solo
- Louis Cahuzac: Arlequin
- Henri Tomasi: Sonatine Attique
- John Mayer: Sargam
‘Since I first heard her as a student, I have regarded Janet Hilton as our finest clarinettist’
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH‘Flying Solo is a real achievement and testament to Hilton’s prowess as a musician…an epic collection of well-juxtaposed and fascinating works’.
CLARINET & SAXOPHONE MAGAZINE‘Miss Hilton evokes a delicious, dusky sound, and the kind of musical power that supersedes mere nervous energy’. NEW YORK TIMES
Playing time: 78 minutes
CC0072
