May 11, 2007

“The chamber music cycle Piano pianissimo (Concert Management Zagreb) placed in the Zagreb historic Illyrian Hall, hosted a young Croatian virtuoso Mihael Paar and a Japanese pianist Hiroyo Imagawa. The clarinet which made a break as a solo-instrument only in the 19th century, on the concert podiums stays less present even today. This made a good occasion for the audience to witness its unique sound in, what seemed to be quite a comprehensive program composed in two rather simetrical parts. Thus each part had an opening piece of somewhat easier material, followed by the central piece firmly connected to the tradition, through which a much deeper and complex sonata form was reached. Likewise, the selection of composers (Gershwin, Benjamin, Brahms, Lovreglio, Klobučar, Poulenc) witnessed a wide range of performers’ affinities and capacities. Mihael Paar, a multiple winner of several international competitions and a frequent figure of numerous concert projects in his homecountry and abroad, equally copes, as seen in his resume, with all music genres, amongst them both, stylized jazz and contemporary music.

Effective cohesion of classic and jazz, which at the start of the 20th century came as an exceptionally grateful genre for the clarinet, was noticeable at the very beginning in the Gershwin’s Three Preludes, originally composed for piano alone. Hiroyo Imagawa, a young artist with a distinguished career of a concert pianist, who lives today in Salzburg, established herself in Gershwin’s showpiece as an equal piano partner. An Interesting sound, skilful mesh of both instruments and a display of clarinet technique set out the composition Le Tombeau de Ravel by which the Australian Arthur Benjamin gave his tribute to Maurice Ravel and to the French impressionism. Afterwards, the Brahms’s four-movement Sonata for clarinet and piano in f-minor op.120 sounded rather serious and inhibited, but the interpretation of Mihael Paar and Hiroyo Imagawa pointed to the range and the power of Brahms’s experience of clarinet and piano combination. Concert Fantasie on the motives from Verdi’s La Traviata by Donato Lovreglio put the tehnical facilities of the clarinet in the spot, and Paar provided an appropriate respond followed by Klobučar’s Suite in its rather short, but distinct movements which brought more introvert, but still clear and stable sound of both instruments. The concluding Sonata by Poulenc, one of the key works of modern clarinet literature with a demanding part of the leading instrument – quick leaps, tempo alterations and a complex treatment of the clarinet in general – but with a solid piano support, rounded the impression of performing maturity of Mihael Paar and Hiroyo Imagawa.”

© Croatian Radio – Ana Vidić, March 11th, 2007