Autour de La Walkyrie: 22 études progressives

From the composer:
"I had always wanted to play Richard Wagner’s music on clarinet, in particular the best pages of what is probably his most famous opera Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), premiered on June 26, 1870.

What makse this opera so famous is the broad range of human feelings depicted and the many impressive symphonic and lyric passages such as ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ or Siegmund’s ‘Spring Song’...

The tone of the clarinet, very close in quality to the human voice, is ideally suited to such a project based on the salient musical moments of an opera.

Throughout their Conservatoire curriculum, clarinet students from C2-level upwards will benefit from the variety of themes and the progressive technical difficulty of the pieces in this collection. Amateurs and professionals alike will enjoy developing the expressive capacities of our instrument.

The etudes are presented in progressive order of difficulty, together with a little note providing elements of the synopsis and specifying where the relevant underlying theme occurs in the opera. Given a general idea of the context and atmosphere, performers will be able to develop their musicality accordingly. The thematic table (p. 4) gives a quick overview of the main themes, a reminder of the leitmotiv system so dear to Richard Wagner.

While each etude is a stand-alone piece, some may be played one after the other without a break, helping clarinet-players to build and increase their endurance. Performed in recital or as an encore, they will introduce a new musical concept to audiences possibly intrigued by the idea of transcribing an opera for solo clarinet. The complementary synoptic table of contents (p. 27) allows performance of the themes in their chronological order of appearance in the opera. 

I hope clarinet-players will enjoy these etudes that I wanted to be as faithful as possible to the emblematic themes from Wagner's Valkyrie."