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John Pickard Chamber Music. CD recording of various works. Ian Mitchell (bass clarinet).

I commissioned Snowbound for bass clarinet, cello and piano from John Pickard in 2010 as part my ongoing exploration of bass clarinet technique, and the expansion of its solo and chamber music repertoire. The first performance was in 2011. This is the premiere recording of the work. There are extant works for clarinet, cello, and piano. However, my specific interest on this occasion was in obliging a composer to write for bass clarinet with a string instrument of a very similar range. I had commissioned Huw Watkins to write for the same combination a year earlier, and have devised a programme specifically for this line-up to encourage composers of different styles to explore the possibilities. The cello and bass clarinet offer a variety of colouristic opportunities across a very wide pitch range, much dynamic contrast, and a range of differing articulations, all of which could throw up issues that need to be addressed by the performers. The extensive range of both instruments allows a variety of roles to be adopted and these are fully exploited by this composer. In addition both instruments are required to relate closely to the piano, which is less flexible in certain areas such as pitch. For instance, the single line instruments exchange register requiring close attention to pitch and dynamic balance, and in addition both instruments must relate to the piano; one particular passage requiring the bass clarinet to play high and quietly, demanding a focus specifically on the piano pitch rather than that of the cello, whereas on other occasions the opposite is required. A deliberate challenge set for the composer was thus to oblige him to find ways of integrating this combination of instruments, which functions very differently from the much more standard lineup of clarinet, cello, piano or violin, cello, piano trio.