Weber: Bassoon Concerto in F major, Op. 75

This is the fourth release by the BBC Philharmonic under its Chief Conductor, Juanjo Mena, and the discography is going from strength to strength – their recording of orchestral works by Falla was ‘Recording on the Month’ in BBC Music. They are joined on this recording by the bassoonist Karen Geoghegan.

Weber wrote the waltz Aufforderung zum Tanze (Invitation to the Dance) in 1819, around the time when he was also working on the opera Der Freischütz. The two works crossed paths once more, in 1841, when the latter was performed at the Opéra de Paris. Berlioz had been commissioned to orchestrate Aufforderung zum Tanze so that it could be incorporated into the opera, and he did so by melding Weber’s polished and elegant original with his own sound world, with customary panache. It is the version included on this disc.

Also featured are Weber’s Symphonies Nos 1 and 2. That these works should be so neglected is partly down to historical accident; they were composed just four years after Beethoven’s monumental ‘Eroica’ Symphony, the work which ditched the rulebook once and for all, and which turned the genre from classical perfection into a personal musical manifesto. So when Weber’s symphonies saw the light of day, overshadowed by the great master, no one took much notice.

Weber wrote the first symphony between 14 December 1806 and 2 January 1807, while the second took just over a week, from 22 and 28 January. Yet, there is no evidence of undue haste in the finished works, quite the opposite in fact. They strongly display what Debussy aptly described as Weber’s ability to ‘scrutinise the soul of each instrument’.

Also on this disc is the composer’s Bassoon Concerto. Much of the work’s appeal derives from Weber’s ear for sonority, and in particular the dark-hued palette natural to the bassoon. The finale has the bassoon playing a jester of great agility, yet with enough elegant touches to dispel any clichéd ideas of the instrument as a figure of fun. The movement builds to an assured and almost reckless virtuoso ending. Karen Geoghegan is the soloist in this work. Gramophone said of this young artist that ‘lyrical, mellifluous playing seems to come as naturally as wit and charm’.

The multi-award-winning Scottish Chamber Orchestra returns with Weber Wind Concertos, the sixteenth album in its celebrated series with Linn. This recording gives the internationally acclaimed principal musicians a chance to dazzle in Weber’s virtuosic and thrilling concertos.

The Clarinet Concerto is one of the cornerstones of the clarinet repertoire.

For this performance Peter Whelan has reconstructed a version of the 1822 Bassoon Concerto score rather than employing the commonly used 1865 version.

In a unique twist Alec Frank-Gemmill performs his own version of the cadenza in the virtuosic Horn Concertino famous for its chromatic pitches and the requirement of multiphonic chords.

The SCO has an impressive recording history including a Grammy-nominated set of Brahms Symphonies, winning the Orchestral category of the BBC Awards in 2009 and a 2011 ECHO Klassik Award for its Mozart recordings, in addition to much critical acclaim.

Spanish clarinettist Maximiliano Martin is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most exciting and charismatic musicians of his generation.

Peter Whelan, one of Europe’s leading exponents of historical and modern bassoon, won a Gramophone Award for his recording of Vivaldi bassoon concertos with La Serenissima.

Alec Frank-Gemmill is much in demand as a soloist and is also frequently invited to play principal horn with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic and the Philharmonia.

The Decca Ansermet Legacy on Eloquence continues to garner the highest plaudits from publications all around the world and the latest batch presents the maestro’s recordings of four key Austro-German Romantics: Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann. This CD brings together all of Ansermet’s Weber recordings for Decca.

Weber’s overtures possess an irresistible panache, being a perfect blend of popular and more highbrow styles. If his operas have proved largely unstageable, their overtures have maintained enduring popularity in the romantic orchestral repertoire. In fact, few were better equipped to distil the emotional and atmospheric essence of romantic lyric drama in terms of the orchestral overture than Weber. As Edward Dent once intimated, Weber never quite overcame a tendency to trump his vocal aces with an orchestral court card. But in the overtures he is the complete master. In them he spun poetic and intensely imaginative summaries of their ensuing dramas.

The British LP issue of the overtures omitted the Jubel (Jubilee) Overture, here restored to circulation on its CD reissue. The coupling, the composer’s Bassoon Concerto, features Henri Helaerts (1907-2001), the principal bassoonist of this orchestra for nearly fifty years. Helaerts was a very popular figure in Geneva, where he founded and conducted Les Cadets de Genève, a musical group comprised of generations of wind instrumentalists. He was one of the principal representatives of the French bassoon with its very characteristic sonority, sadly disappearing today.

"Ansermet is always successful with Weber's allegros by reason of his orchestra's lively playing and his own sense of buoyant rhythm… sheer pleasure, especially the sense of enjoyment in the playing of Preciosa and the remarkably deft performance of Abu Hassan, a piece notoriously difficult to play really cleanly. " Gramophone

Kantorow and the Tapiola Sinfonietta revisit Weber focusing on works by the young composer, before the fame that his opera Der Freischütz would bring. The two symphonies – the only works in the genre that Weber composed – were written in the space of six weeks around New Year 1808, while Weber were staying at the court of the Count of Württemberg-Öls in Carlsruhe (nowadays Pokój in Poland). The symphonies also bear witness to the period of transition from classicism to romanticism, particularly in terms of orchestral colour

The euphonium is said to have been invented in Weimar in 1843. In German and Russian military bands it came to replace the bassoon, suggesting that transcriptions of works for bassoon should make an interesting and useful addition to euphonium solo repertoire. This recording includes two original works for euphonium, and transcriptions of bassoon concertos by Mozart and Weber, with an effective transcription of Tchaikovsky’s Andante cantabile. Roland Fröscher, who plays exclusively on a YORK Eminence Euphonium, and the Windcorp Brass Band won the Swedish Brass Band Master 2007 title in the competition’s top performance class.