Gitarre & Laute

Musique Extraordinaire

1: Samuel T. Klemke plays Bach, Sor,
Henze, recorded in Juli 2003, ©
2006
2: Laura U. Klemke plays Paganini, Bach,
Ponce and Searl, recorded in June
2004, © 2006
3: Guitar Duo Klemke plays de Falla,
Tárrega, Sor, Granados, Boccherini,
Cahpi y Lorente, Rodrigo, Pujol, recorded
in August 2004, © 2005
SINGLE 1: Samuel Klemke plays Koyunbaba,
© 2007
SINGLE 2: Laura Klemke plays a Preludio
by Adam Falckenhagen, © 2008
Source of supply for all of the CDs:
www.klemke.de
*****

Laura and Samuel Klemke are siblings. Samuel was born in Herdecke in 1978, and is sister in Warendorf in 1981. At the age of four, they were capable of reading music, from then on they were taught to play the guitar systematically by their father. Since 1999 (Samuel) resp. 2000 (Laura) they have both studied with Monika Rost in Weimar. The first competitions both of them won were those of “Youth Makes Music”, a few others, also international ones, followed. They produced the CDs themselves ... professionally made and professionally looking!

Samuel Klemke plays (Vol. 1) Bach's Suite BWV 997, afterwards Sor's op. 7 and Henze’s Winter-Music 1. My first impression: Challenging for a debut, but brother and sisters have already been in this profession for such a long time that actually one can barely call it a debut. And his playing is not the playing of a debutant, either. Controlled, restraining himself, well-balanced in sound and technically without audible problems.

Monika Rost, his professor for guitar in Weimar, offers kind of preface to the CD: “When Samuel came to study in Weimar in 1999, he was well-featured […] The first  insistent challenge for his improving was forming a beautiful, resonant and sustainable tone - the most important aspect for the guitarist at all.” Well, he mastered this problem ... thus, is he ready now? For me, the Sor-Fantaisie, for example, ranges much between mf and mp, I miss levels concerning volume and the stylistic distinctions, too ... but what am I actually expecting?

I can listen to the CDs of two musicians who were in their early twenties (Samuel 25 and Laura 23) when they recorded the music. Apparently since they were four years old, they had not done much but making music and practising. At the age of seven, Samuel had given his first complete solo recital: Giuliani, Sor, Paganini. Then, smaller and later on also international competitions and master classes. And afterwards “Royal Winter Music”? Do I expect a well-balanced and established opinion towards this music? A comment presented in a decided manner? Underlined and with exclamation mark? Do I deal with musically precocious wunderkinder ... or perhaps with children who make the career which their parents led them into? But the trainer of both musicians is not Jutta Müller, it is Monika Rost!

Now, all examinations are passed, all scholarships exploited. Now, the time is come to go into life itself, the Klemke’s do not visit master classes any more - they give them now. Back to “Musique Extraordinaire 1”, Samuel’s solo CD: Bach, Sor, Henze. The fugue from BWV 997 with its duration of almost eight minutes is a touchstone ... in its original meaning a stone, which one determines the standard of a gold alloy with. Is the interpreter capable of playing the piece in a way the listener can understand it and follow the gist for a relatively long time? He is indeed ... Still, I could imagine a more consistent way of phrasing, which in the end suggests kind of a formal analysis of the piece. To reach this integrating agogical means is a good tool - however, their using requires worldly-wise serenity which Samuel Klemke cannot show. It, the inner calmness, and the sometimes irritating minimal retarding of resolutions, for example, can give a massive inner dynamic to a piece, and I especially miss them in Klemke’s interpretation of the Sor-Fantasie. Here, I have to admit, I hear banalities here and there, which show to advantage on the CD and which sometimes are even emphasized. And then Henze: It is the big gesture which is already awaited for in “Gloucester”, a loud and clear speaking of the own opinion. And Samuel Klemke has the heart to do so! The introvert movement “Romeo and Juliet” in comparison could be a little softer, more demurely philosophizing.

Laura Klemke plays a more low-risk programme on first sight. Again, I find the introducing Paganini Sonata full of blatant banalities, which have nothing to do with Laura’s playing, though. Here, it is the piece, which the young interpretator cannot put into life because it is partly trivial.

Then, Bach’s Suite BWV 996. The introductory non-measured Passaggio asks for and permits liberty which I missed in her brother’s playing ... and here, too, I miss savouring this freedom. Convincingly, she manages the contrast of the strict fugato of the Presto afterwards.

The “Sonata Mexicana” by Ponce follows, and finally “Five” by Humphrey Searle. I am least persuaded by the last piece.

And then, the duo CD: Everything I wished for in the solo CDs seems to be fulfilled - as if led by a ghost hand. Klemke & Klemke play the standard repertoire from de Falla to Pujol, from Albéniz to Rodrigo, and they do it convincingly. Nothing is left of their restraint -- here, they play freely and in a creative manner. Perhaps, it was not a ghost hand which effected this changing, but the hand of Thomas Müller-Pering, who the siblings studied post-graduately with after their first examinations?

The duo recording conveys something else which was barely detectable in the solo recordings: Their enjoying playing and the music. Perhaps these are feelings which exclusively or mainly appear in chamber music, but they infect and devolve to the listener.

Furthermore, there are two single CDs. Samuel plays Koyunbaba, and again one feels the enormous advancement compared to the former CD. Right, the world of sounds which “Koyunbaba” develops, is a special one, but it is mainly achieved by the open tuning. And yet, you enter another musical dimension: true, voluminous, wide; creative, occassionally downright lascivious, self-confident, convincing.

The same can be said about the CD of his sister Laura. She plays Falckenhagen through all keys…and that with a breathtaking grand air and compellingly.

The CDs which I was allowed to mention and describe, they witness a period in the lives of two still very young musicians ... we experience the first recordings of two soloists and their combined duo, and then again two solo recordings which evolved some years later. In between, there were four, five years of studying in Weimar! Thus, the CDs do not only prove the huge measure of their artistic changes but also the quality of the education at the Academy of Music Franz Liszt Weimar!