Weber: Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F minor, Op. 73

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.

Martin Spangenberg’s performances reveal the genuine delicacy of this music.

His meticulous consideration of tempos reveals new aspects of this magnificent music.

Also included are the overtures to Beherrscher der Geister and Oberon.

On this disc, 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.

The two concertos and the concertino for clarinet and orchestra are considered among the repertoire cornerstones for today’s clarinettists. Weber wrote the works for his personal friend Heinrich Bärmann, the principal clarinettist of the Munich court orchestra, whose own embellishments of the works (changes of articulation, extra grace notes, and even an added accompanied cadenza in the first concerto) have been incorporated in the performances recorded here. Michael Collins suggests that these changes ‘do not make the music any easier to play, but they do make it more thrilling’.

Each of the works displays a well-balanced mix of virtuosity, daring, humour, and sheer beauty, and throughout, the role of the orchestra is much more than a mere accompaniment. The woodwind solos, a trio of horns, blaring trumpets, and dashing violins contribute greatly to making these works so captivating.

Written in 1806, when Weber was just nineteen years old, the virtuosic Horn Concertino pushed known horn techniques to new limits, requiring the soloist among other feats to produce a ‘four-note chord’, the technique known as multiphonics. The work is today considered a gem in the horn repertoire, and our soloist, Stephen Stirling, is ‘a player gifted with the utmost sensitivity and imagination, which is shown through the beautiful way he shapes musical phrases and the extraordinary range of colours he employs’ – in the words of the late Richard Hickox.

The brilliant clarinettist Karl-Heinz Steffens has been a principal member of the Berliner Philharmoniker for many years. Here he performs exciting romantic repertoire with “soulful torrents of melody.” The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra’s recent Mahler cycle has received excellent reviews.

For his third album for Sony Classical Fabio di Càsola has recorded works by Carl Maria von Weber, accompanied by the Chamber Philharmonic of St. Petersburg under the baton of its principal conductor Juri Gilbo. Weber came to know and love the clarinet through his friendship with Heinrich Baermann, a famous clarinettist of his day. The three most important works dedicated to Baermann are brought together on this CD: the two Clarinet Concertos and the Clarinet Quintet, which is to be heard on our recording in a version for clarinet and string orchestra.