Interlude
Challenging the Clarinetist: Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto
by Maureen Buja December 10th, 2025
In a new recording, clarinettist Jonas Frølund takes on the complexity of Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, written with two soloists in mind: the clarinetist and a snare drummer. Much like Shostakovich’s first piano concerto, written for piano and trumpet, this concerto combines two unlike instruments for an interesting exploration of contrasts, both lyrical and percussive.
Written in 1928 at the request of Nielsen’s friend, Carl Johann Michaelsen, for Aage Oxenvad of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet and solo clarinetist of the Royal Danish Orchestra, Nielsen made the clarinet a unique personality in the work. One writer described it as ‘schizophrenic’, moving wildly between a ‘warm-hearted and gentle’ personality and one that was ‘hysterical and troll-like’. The work is written for the two soloists, strings, 2 horns, and 2 bassoons.
The dedicatee, Oxenvad, thought that Nielsen himself had to be a clarinet player because ‘he found all the hardest notes to play’.
It opens with a heavy, plodding melody in the lower strings, imitated next by higher strings. This will come back in a number of forms and is important in giving unity to the work.
As a narrative, the one-movement work expresses much about the personality of the clarinet as an instrument. Like a character on stage in a play, it reacts to the world around it, sparring with the snare drum and floating above the ensemble. It sets the motifs played by the rest of the ensemble.
It’s character that’s important here, probably more important than notes and sounds. For Nielsen, Music is Sound, something he discovered when playing with the sounds created by the protective wrapping around a painting he’d received. The seemingly banal statement (Music is Sound) encompasses a world of sound that might be outside one’s common experience. Certainly, the pairing of clarinet and percussion, combined with such a minimalistic ensemble, was unique. The strings might supply the majority of the accompaniment, but it’s the brassiness of the horns that puts an edge on their sound. Each instrument is given its own personality, and this characterful stage gives the clarinet something to react to, something to alternatively soothe and ruffle.
Jonas Frølund plays with an authority and sureness that completely takes over the work, as it should. The ensemble also speaks with authority, happy to both take the lead from the themes thrown to it by the clarinet and to provide its own backdrop to the two soloists. Jakob Weber on snare drum has the difficult task of being both percussive and, at times, lyrical on his drum.
Frølund’s virtuosity and fluidity of line transform this work into something more than just a clarinet concerto. It’s more like the opportunity for a clarinetist to show off the true capabilities of the instrument, whether sweet or acerbic. Jonas Frølund Tackles Nielsen's Dual-Soloist Concerto