Weber Clarinet

On this album, the exclusive Chandos artist, Michael Collins, plays the clarinet in three works for clarinet and orchestra by Weber, as well as conducting the City of London Sinfonia. The disc also includes Weber’s horn concertino, featuring the soloist Stephen Stirling.

Julian Bliss joins the Carducci String Quartet in performances of two seminal works – Weber’s Clarinet Quintet in B flat Major, Op. 34 and Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K.581.

For his first release on Alpha, the clarinetist and conductor Jörg Widmann celebrates the music of a composer who wrote some of the finest pieces ever devoted to his instrument: Carl Maria von Weber. With the ensemble of which he is principal conductor, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, he has recorded the Clarinet Quintet (in its version with string ensemble) and the Concertino, composed in 1811 and 1815 respectively, along with the ever-popular Overture to Der Freischütz.

On this new recording by Leslie Craven, he is joined by the wonderful Victoria String Quartet. This CD features clarinet quintets by Brahms, Weber and, as a bonus, Arnold Cooke.

Alexander Janiczek leads the SCO's section principals - Maximilano Martín (clarinet), Peter Whelan (bassoon) and Alec Frank-Gemmill (horn) - in a thrilling programme by the German composer Carl Maria von Weber.

Austrian clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer has joined forces with Chinese pianist Yuja Wang to record an album of works by composers of the Romantic era. Blue Hour, set for release on March 8 by Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music Canada, the country’s leading music company, features some of the jewels of the repertoire including Brahms’s Intermezzo in A major, Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words – arranged for clarinet and piano by Ottensamer – and Weber’s virtuosic Grand Duo concertant. The album reveals Ottensamer to be not just a sensitive and responsive chamber partner, but also a brilliant soloist, as he gives a dazzling performance of Weber’s First Clarinet Concerto, recorded with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Mariss Jansons.

Carl Maria von Weber had a special fondness for the clarinet, finding it the ideal instrument for expressing the profound Romanticism he had made his own.

Together with Bernhard Henrik Crusell’s concerto (composed in the same year - 1811 - as Weber’s) and that by the Polish composer Karol Kurpiński (which still remains unknown), this album is a diverse survey of early Romantic-era clarinet concertos.

For his first solo album, the clarinetist Raphaël Sévère has chosen Weber’s Concerto op.73, recorded live at a concert in the Berlin Philharmonie with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester under the direction of Aziz Shokhakimov. He couples this with the ‘Silvana’ Variations op.33 and the Grand duo concertant op.48 alongside the pianist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger. These three works born of the friendship between the virtuoso Heinrich Baermann and the precursor of Romanticism Weber display the clarinet at its most lyrical.

Eric Hoeprich, principal clarinettist of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, is one of the leading interpreters for playing on historical clarinets. He has published numerous highly acclaimed recordings for GLOSSA, including the reference recording of the quintets of Mozart and Brahms on original instruments with the London Haydn Quartet (jpc 6049199). With Weber's lively virtuoso Clarinet Quintet op. 34, he now turns to another favourite of the audience.