Florent Héau

'Brahms is not easy to approach. He likes to conceal the beauties of his works, and one only becomes conscious of them trhough a deep knowledge of his music.' Max Reger 1894

“Max Reger’s comment could have just as well applied to his own music, which is also reputedly difficult to get to grips with. When we plunged into studying his Opus 49 Sonatas, it was only after sorting through their many-stranded complexity - and especially their intricate harmonic patterns - that we were able to appreciate their beauty. It was much liked the Albumblatt (Album leaf), a short piece written in the same period as the Opus 49 Sonatas, that it would have been impossible not to include it, too. “ Florent Héau & Patrick Zygmanowski

Florent Heau won praise for his recordings of Mozart’s chamber music for clarinet in 2008, an album which received excellent support from Classic FM.

Guastavino is one of Argentina’s major composers. He created an attractive national music using folk elements and a language firmly rooted in Romanticism. This collection includes his Clarinet Sonata, piano solos, as well as transcriptions of some of the maestro’s loveliest songs for clarinet. Héau is an important figure in the French clarinet school, performing as a soloist as well as giving master classes.

Florent Héau here goes back to the source and origins of his instrument: Mozart and his friend and brother Mason Anton Stadler - to whom the critic Schink, fascinated by the velvety sound of the clarinet, wrote in these terms: ‘Your instrument has so soft and lovely a tone that no one with a heart can resist it . . .’

This CD is a paean of praise to tenderness in music, illustrating Mozart’s innermost convictions about fraternity, love and life. Florent Héau and the Manfred Quartet have sought to recreate that gentleness of timbres, that enveloping, spellbinding sound which have made the Clarinet Quintet so well-loved.

They have prolonged this atmosphere of ineffable loveliness with two transcriptions for clarinet and string trio of Mozart sonatas originally written for piano and violin. This was a widespread practice in the second half of the eighteenth century, the period when solo wind instruments become popular: players often transcribed tunes from successful operas or music for other combinations, thus expanding their repertoire and at the same time encouraging progress in instrumental design.

Over the last decade or so of his life, Mozart was both a witness to and a protagonist in the fantastic development of the clarinet, from the Denner instruments he heard in Mannheim to Stadler’s five-keyed clarinet in Vienna.

"Brahms, the classicist, the academic - was actually a great explorer in the kingdom of musical language, a great progressive" Arnold Schoenberg