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The clarinettist Karel Dohnal: three strikes and out.

Article Excerpt
How can a performer today influence not just the musical consciousness of society but the community of composers too? We talked about the problem with Karel Dohnal, a young Czech clarinettist who has made a major name at home and abroad for his interpretations particularly of modern music.

You have taken part in lots of competitions. Have they in any way changed your life, your career?

These sorts of international competition don't have the kind of importance for the clarinettist that they have for pianists or violinists or, say, singers, who when they win some big international competition get not just prize money but also management, which can even mean dozens of concerts. Of course, competitions do get me a reputation in the music world. Secondly I practise for them more intensively, longer, more deeply and much more precisely than for ordinary concerts, and thirdly I get a terrific overview of what's being played on the international scene. When you live in the enclosed environment of a school or a country you can sometimes feel you have achieved a certain level, but then you suddenly go into the big wide world and discover that they play differently there, for instance. Not all of it appeals to me but sometimes something does, and it's an inspiration for the future. And fourthly, of course, it's very pleasant to win some money that I can then spend on another competition, international master classes or for buying a new instrument or note material.

Could you give us a more specific idea of what you encountered when you first discovered that people outside played in a way that was different from here?

My first Prague Spring competition, which was in 1996, was a big impulse for me. I thought I played very well in the first round, without any faults of any kind, but I still didn't get through to the next round. Some members of the jury said it was a question of politics, but others were critical of me, mainly for problems with sound. I decided that maybe there was something in it, and since I wasn't going to be reassured by soothing noises about politics from jurors, I started to look hard at how I could improve my sound. The Prague Spring was in May, the semester ended in June and at the end of October I would be off on my scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. During the vacation I resolved not to play at all for a month and forget about embouchure completely, and then I started again entirely from scratch--from sustained notes, from practice deliberately focused on tone. After six months of intensive practice enhanced by studying in London where I got a slightly different idea of sound, I went to the competition in Belgrade, where all the jurors praised not only my play, musicality and technique but also beautiful sound. It was to do with ambition and actually the first thing that prompted me not to...