Weber

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.

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.

Der Freischütz is one of the great milestones in the history of opera. The resounding success of its premiere in 1821 practically made it a manifesto for German Romantic opera, one that would become a significant formative influence on Wagner. Although it has its roots in the Singspiel tradition exemplified by Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Der Freischütz cut new ground with its potent mixture of supernatural elements, dreams, folk melodies, evocations of nature, and symphonic tone painting. Here, von Weber exploited his brilliant orchestral imagination–using, for example, carefully divided string tremolos and a gleaming choir of four horns–to maximum effect.

This recital of Austro-German repertoire (albeit composed to Italian and English texts) was prompted by Callas’s indignation on discovering that her EMI producer, Walter Legge, had chosen his wife, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, for a recording of the Verdi Requiem. ‘If your wife can sing my repertoire, then I can sing hers,’ declared Callas.

Launched by a fizzing account of the overture to the Paris ballet Les petits riens, the programme centres around three magnificent showpiece arias for Aloysia, famed both for her expressive cantabile and her coloratura prowess. Among her specialities were sustained pianissimo high notes; and I can’t imagine they were more delicately floated than they are by Sabine Devieilhe, a lyric coloratura who combines a pure, sweet timbre and dazzling virtuosity…In one of her signature roles, Devieilhe despatches the Queen’s ‘Der Hölle Rache’ with terrific pizzazz, her poise in alt even enabling her to shade the high-wire coloratura at will.

Weber's piano music, once played by most pianists, has since suffered neglect and even the famous Invitation to the Dance is now more often heard in its orchestral form. Since he was a renowned pianist as well as a major composer, the neglect seems odd, particularly when other pianist composers such as Chopin and Liszt are at the centre of the concert repertory; but part of the trouble may lie in the difficulty of the music, reflecting his own huge hands and his tendency to write what the booklet-essay calls 'chords unplayable by others'. Jean-François Heisser, the French classical pianist, makes out a real case for this music, and his playing of the two sonatas is idiomatic and resourceful, even if one can't banish the feeling that Weber all too readily used the melodic and harmonic formulae of 18thcentury galanterie and simply dressed them up in 19th-century salon virtuosity.

Even if both of them were destined to die tragically of illness at a very early age (Weber at 39, Schubert just 31!), the two composers on this disc were healthy enough when they wrote these works, and were even beginning to taste success. Except that it was not to the piano sonata that they owed their fame: not without a twinkle in his eye, Paul Lewis has coupled their works in this genre in order to paint a different and highly elegant portrait of two musical dramatists who were emblematic figures of Austro-German Romanticism.

Maja Weber spielt auf einem speziellen Stradivari-Cello, dem “Bonamy Dobrée-Suggia“ 1717. Es war u.a. ein Lieblingsinstrument von Pablo Casals (seine Schülerin hat es gespielt) Der Cellist Hancock spielte es, der englische Gelehrte und Namensgeber Bonamy Dobrée besaß es.

Beethovens weltberühmte Klaviersonaten wie Waldstein, Appassionata und die zweisätzige F-Dur-Sonate op. 54 werden von Mathias Weber am modernen Paulello Flügel Opus 102 geboten. Der Pianist verbindet eine große Spanne der Dynamik und Expression mit reicher Farbgebung, brillanten Läufen, Akzentuierungen und trefflichem Rubato. In die Waldsteinsonate ist zudem das traumversunkene Andante favori eingewoben, während die Appassionta mit echtem Feuer à la Beethoven in ihren rollenden Läufen und Klangkaskaden glänzt.