Sabine and Wolfgang Meyer
Clarinet works by Weber, Mendelssohn, Baermann
EMI 5 57359 2
Items in the classical style for the clarinet all have one thing in common -- the apparent impossibility of escaping the influence of Mozart's two masterpieces for the instrument. Brahms succeeded in his Clarinet Quintet simply by acquiescing, not trying to struggle against the echo from the past, but instead embracing it and, eventually, managing to go beyond it. None of the items on this CD, however, successfully evade Mozart's ghost.
Heinrich Baermann was a forgotten name until recently, yet he dominates this CD. He was a famous early 19th century clarinetist who stimulated Weber and Mendelssohn to write pieces for the instrument, and also wrote three quintets featuring it himself. The slow movement from the last of these became famous in the early 20th century when it was unearthed and attributed, quite wrongly, to the young Wagner. Listening to it here you quickly realize how absurd that attribution actually was. The instrumental backing for such items in the 19th century was very fluid. You could play them with a piano or a string quartet, which ever happened to be the more convenient.
Here Sabine and Wolfgang Meyer opt to play them with a small orchestra, that of London's Academy of St Martin in the Fields under Kenneth Sillito. Sabine Meyer plays the clarinet in the Weber and Mendelssohn items, with Wolfgang on the rather lugubrious basset-horn in the latter, and then Wolfgang takes to the clarinet for the Baerman piece itself.
It has to be said that the music as written is not of the top class. But if you're attracted to either the instrument or the soloists, or happen to be in a particularly good mood anyway, you might find this rather light-weight recital makes a pleasant enough background sound.
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