Listen & tracks

5 works · 61:00

Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 120 No. 1Johannes Brahms 4 movements24:02
1. 1 i. Allegro appassionato 8:18
2. 2 ii. Andante un poco adagio 5:21
3. 3 iii. Allegro grazioso 4:54
4. 4 iv. Vivace 5:29
Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5Alban Berg 4 movements8:15
1. 5 i. Mässig 1:26
2. 6 ii. Sehr langsam 2:05
3. 7 iii. Sehr rasch 1:05
4. 8 iv. Langsam 3:39
9 Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23 Amy Beach [Arr. for clarinet and piano] 6:50
Sonata for Clarinet and PianoLeonard Bernstein 2 movements10:58
1. 10 i. Grazioso 4:03
2. 11 ii. Andantino – Vivace e leggiero 6:55
12 Liquid Crystal Elliott Gyger 10:55

Liquid Crystal was two years in the making after concerts in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in 2019.

From the soaring melodies of Brahms’s F minor Sonata to the cyclonically virtuosic modernity of Elliott Gyger, the album moves through arresting extremes. An early Bernstein sonata brings melodic beauty and rhythmic vitality; Luke Carbon’s arrangement of Amy Beach’s violin Romance sits beside Alban Berg’s extraordinary Four Pieces, a brief kaleidoscopic journey through expressionist sentiment.

Carbon and Raineri are among Australia’s most in-demand freelance artists. The disc is a “mixtape” of their favourite works for clarinet and piano.

In the artist’s words

Alex and I first performed together at the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (BIFEM) in 2017, playing an explosive new chamber work by Elliott Gyger. We then decided to see if he’d written anything for clarinet and piano and stumbled across the behemoth that is Liquid Crystal. After performing it along the east coast in 2019, we decided it had been a large enough endeavour to put it together in the first place to warrant recording it.

This album is a bit of a mixtape. I’m old enough now to remember recording my favourite daggy songs from the stereo onto a blank cassette so that I could listen to them on my Walkman on the bus, and definitely old enough to remember giving friends and crushes burnt CD’s of whatever peculiarities I was listening to at the time. They were always disparate collections and so too is this album.

These are pieces that Alex and I love; cherished pieces of the clarinet/piano repertoire, a new arrangement that I hope stays the course, and a unique piece of Australiana that I’m glad we spent the time to put together. We’re very proud to share them all with you on a mixtape of our own called Liquid Crystal.

— Luke Carbon

This album has been a journey, laughably delayed by the global pandemic, but despite its stretched timeline it has been an immensely grounding and artistically rewarding project. I would like to thank a number of people that have assisted in making this album possible: Martin Wright at Move Records for constant unwavering professionalism, Elliott Gyger for keeping us very much on our creative tippy-toes, Cameron Jamieson + Brodie McAllister for making us look extremely Tarantinian on the album cover, Loris Orthwein for hosting our many noisy rehearsals, Lyle Chan for sage-like guidance in the initial stages of the project, and finally I would like to thank Luke for the countless rehearsals and Zoom sessions and for aligning his madness with my own.

— Alex Raineri

Reviews

Liquid Crystal for clarinet and piano by Australian composer Elliott Gyger. The work, of about 11 minutes duration, begins with a soft, energising perpetuum mobile which creates an expectation of excitement. Liquid runs and swirls are wonderfully evocative. It is exhilarating, compelling and wonderfully satisfying to listen to. Luke Carbon and Alex Raineri give a powerful rendition of this major composition. Brahms’s two sonatas for clarinet and piano are arguably some of the most glorious music ever written for that instrumental combination. Many recordings have been made over the years and this one by Carbon and Raineri of the Sonata Op. 120 No.1 compares exceedingly well. Carbon’s interpretation brings out all the nuances, with beautifully regulated tone, lovely phrasing and gorgeous pianissimos matched by Raineri’s excellent musicianship and pianistic prowess. Multi-instrumentalist Luke Carbon and virtuoso pianist Alex Raineri are both on upward career trajectories; their impressive career achievements are outlined in the liner notes.

— Gwen Bennett, Music Trust Loud Mouth e-zine

Artists

Luke Carbon

clarinet

Luke Carbon is a woodwind multi-instrumentalist and educator based in Melbourne. An orchestral musician, chamber player, and fluent improviser, he attended the Australian National Academy of Music during 2015-2016 and was awarded a Master of Music Research, the Musica Viva Chamber Music Prize, and a programming award for his exploration of third stream music.

Alex Raineri

piano

Alex Raineri is an active recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician. Alex is the Artistic Director of the Brisbane Music Festival and is a passionate exponent of contemporary music, having given over 130 World Premieres to date.

Leonard Bernstein

composer

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) was an American composer, conductor and pianist whose Broadway scores, concert works and tireless advocacy reshaped how wide audiences meet classical music.

Johannes Brahms

composer

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. His music for piano, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and voice remains central to the concert repertoire.

Elliott Gyger

composer

Elliott Gyger was born in Sydney, and has been writing music since about the age of ten. His compositional and research interests include the creation of a purely musical sense of drama and narrative, and the multilayered interplay of music and text.

Amy Beach

composer

Amy Beach wrote late-Romantic art song and chamber music of fluent melody and careful text-setting: Browning songs and Chanson d'amour for voice, a violin Romance that travels easily to other instruments, and larger scores in a Brahmsian vein.

Alban Berg

composer

Alban Berg joined late-Romantic lyricism to twelve-tone method in a small, intense body of work. Operas, chamber scores and songs carry expressionist feeling inside tightly organised forms, from the early Piano Sonata to the Four Pieces for clarinet and piano.