Danny Goldman Opens the NCMS Season with the Clarinet in Full Voice
On Sunday, September 20, the Nashville Chamber Music Society opened its 2026–27 season with a concert featuring works for clarinet performed by Danny Goldman. A virtuoso who could play all of Weber’s concerti by the age of 14, Goldman came to Nashville after James Zimmermann’s rather public fall from grace, first as the orchestra’s “acting” principal clarinetist. Last March, he won the position permanently.
Goldman has a remarkably diverse skill set, performing Klezmer, Big Band, and Dixieland as well as the classical repertoire, from Weber to Schoenberg. When he puts the instrument down, he produces music for commercials, movies, documentaries, and hip-hop and pop artists. On the 20th, however, his hat bore the title “classical clarinetist,” to the delight of many folks in the room. Indeed, the repertoire he chose consisted of some of the most important staples of the instrument.
As an example, the concert opened with English composer Malcolm Arnold’s Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 29, a short, lively, and challenging piece written in 1951 for the famous British clarinetist Frederick Thurston. While the first and last movements are the most virtuosic in terms of flash, wide leaps, and syncopated rhythms, for my money, the beauty of this piece is its slow, lyrical second movement, which explores the darker and more intimate chalumeau register of the instrument. Goldman performed it with a clear, centered, and warm tone. Alessandra Volpi’s delicate touch in the accompaniment was equally gorgeous. She is quite busy on the Nashville skyline herself, performing Barber’s Second Concerto with the Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra at the end of September and a Shakuhachi Concert with Shawn Tairyu Head on October 18.
The next two pieces, both drawing on Goldman’s memories of travel, dwell on overt Italian topoi, particularly the Italian pastorale. Gabriel Pierné’s Canzonetta, Op. 19 opens with what sounds like a siciliano, while Eugène Bozza’s Fantaisie Italienne expresses the Italian operatic themes the composer encountered while there after winning the Prix de Rome. Here Goldman demonstrated the clarinet’s remarkable ability to create haunting nostalgia.
The characteristically programmatic music that defined the first half of the concert ended over the top with Paul Reade’s Suite from the Victorian Kitchen Garden, written for clarinetist Emma Johnson. This piece was my least favorite of the concert—not because it wasn’t played well (it was), nor because it doesn’t sound like it should, but instead because it sounds exactly as Reade intended: television music for the BBC from the heyday of public television. The different movements are so expressive that they leave very little to the imagination. For the evening, however, all that programmatic music made for a wonderful setup to the second half: Brahms’ Trio in A Minor, Op. 114.
Brahms’ Trio was written late in his life, inspired, as the story goes, by the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld’s rich tone. Indeed, Adolf Menzel attended the premiere of the Trio and sketched Mühlfeld as the ancient Greek Muse of music and lyric poetry, Euterpe.
Founder of NCMS MaryGrace Waggoner joined Volpi and Goldman for Brahms’ wonderful work. The interaction among the three instruments was magical, especially the directed melodic conversation between cello and clarinet. Waggoner admirably maintained the banter when Goldman ascended into the clarion register of his instrument. In the final movement, the return to the darkness of the first movement was truly “autumnal”—warmly gloomy even as it remained sentimental. It is amazing that Brahms wrote so little for this instrument, for he clearly understood its colors so well, and its capacity for blending, something Waggoner and Goldman clearly understand too.
In all, it was the perfect end to a truly remarkable evening in Wightman Chapel at Scarritt Bennett Center. As a side note, in a city chock-full of churches, I think this one has the best sound. The rest of the autumn looks to be wonderful for NCMS. On October 1, Upstream Duo will present pieces co-written by Will Healy and George Meyer, as well as J. S. Bach’s Sonata No. 6 for Violin and Harpsichord in G Major, BWV 1019. Then, at the beginning of December, NCMS’s traditional holiday concert, featuring Scandinavian folk tunes and Christmas classics, promises a great way to continue the season.
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Joseph E. Morgan is a father of two, husband, teacher and recovering guitarist in Middle Tennessee.
