Customer Reviews

Great Recordings Of The Century - Mozart: Clarinet Concerto, Sinfonia Concertante / Meyer, Vonk

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The fact that Ms. Meyer has made yet another recording of this work has me in anticipation, especially when some say it is even better than this 1990 recording. That is hard to imagine.* As someone who's often felt existsing interpretations just don't quite do it, I was thrilled to discover this disc. Meyer gets the balance of pathos, playfulness, innocence, and naivete just right. Tempi are brisker than most performances but to me sound just right. The tone is dark and almost smokey at times, partly because she plays a basset clarinet for which the work was written, partly because she is a superb colorist who gets a maximum of impact with a minimum of flashy external effect. The slow movement plumbs the depths like I've never heard excepting maybe Reginald Kell, only Meyer has even more technique than Kell! In the first movement, though, she finds more depth and profundity in the development without ever really seeming to push--she is just such a natural with this music. And although this is not billed as a "period performance," she ad libs ornametations in the concerto very much in line with what reports tells went on in Mozart's day, giving the whole performance a very improvisatory feeling. (By contrast, Anthony Pay does no such ornamentations on his recording with Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, a recording that IS billed as "period" or "authentic," but which comes off a bit dutiful and dull.) The finale is as rolicking as one could wish for, without the heavy-handed tendency some take of playing the secondary theme as a dark and mysterious portent of death or misfortune. Vonk and the Staatskapelle Dresden accompany her with energy and clarity (listen to those airy strings!), maybe sounding a *little* too Romantic at times, but only *slightly* so. Sonics are warm and first-rate. This truly is a "Great Recording of the 20th Century."

*Post script later: Having now listened to the later live recording with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic, I can state that this Vonk CD is to my ears the better recording. Meyer is wonderous on both, but Abbado and the BPO skate over the music, missing inner textures and lines in the process. The strings in that recording sound overly smooth (Karajan would have been scourned if he'd performed it so "slick") and through much of the performance everyone seems on autopilot. It may be the autopilot of a Gulfstream GV, but it's still autopilot.

It is one of the single greatest concertos ever composed for any instrument, composed by a man whose 250th birthday is being celebrated on this very day.

Mozart's celebrated Clarinet Concerto has received an endless number of recordings over the decades, many of them exquisitely done. But this particular 1990 recording by clarinettist Sabine Meyer for EMI, with the late Hans Vonk leading the Dresden State Orchestra (Staatskapelle Dresden), is particularly brilliant in the way it brings out the work's inherent poignancy, and with it the knowledge that the great Wolfgang completed the work with only two months left in his life.

Since it is known that the work was composed with a basset clarinet in mind, this is how Meyer performs her solo part on this recording (as well as on her later recording with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic). But it never sounds like she is resorting to period-instrument fussiness in her solo role. The joyous outer movements are balanced by the haunting and touching slow movement to which Meyer brings out the gorgeous expressiveness of her instrument. Vonk and the Dresden orchestra accompany her with a good deal of panache.

Using the far lesser-known Sinfonia-Concertante for clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and horn was a very cagey move, given that the authenticity of this piece insofar as it relates to the Mozart canon is doubted by some musicologists. The performance by Meyer (using a modern clarinet), members of her own Sabine Meyer Wind Ensemble (Diethelm Jonas [oboe]; Bruno Schneider [horn]; and Sergio Azzolini [bassoon]), and the Dresdeners under Vonk pretty much certifies that this is indeed a true Mozart composition, full of warmth and wit in its writing.

This is a recording that genuinely lives up to EMI's claim of it being one of the Great Recordings of the Century, and is well recommended, especially for this day when we honor the great Mozart's birthday.

I usually associate the amazing performances in EMI's "Great Recordings of the Century" series with definitive mono releases from the 50s, like Furtwangler's Beethoven 9th, or even great analog stereo dates from the 60s & 70s like Perlman's Paganini Caprices or his Brahms Violin Sonatas with Ashkenazy, or (though I'm not a big opera fan) Karajan's Strauss operas. But it takes a truly special recent digital recording, an instant classic if you will, to earn the GROTC label -- like Perlman's Beethoven Violin Concerto or this album of Mozart's Concertos. Hans Vonk leads one of the world's great orchestras, the Staatskapelle Dresden, through Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and Sinfonia Concertante, which is a concerto for four winds. The soloists are all amazing, with clarinetist Sabine Meyer leading the pack. This is Mozart at its best -- these are truly magnificent works and performances.

She has a wonderful sound. The CD is terrific and I highly recommend it.

I love the composer and the player. The product and service is just excellent. Thanks.

Since W A Mozart only wrote one Clarinet Concerto, this Album is a must in any Classical Music collection.

The manuscript of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto is lost to eternity. Whoever oversaw its publication in the early 19th Century transcribed it up for a normal clarinet rather than the basset clarinet that was the instrument of Anton Stadler, the `onlie begetter' of the work. This performance of K 622 is a reconstruction of the original score. Our sole source of the Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds, K 297b, is not in Mozart's hand and it differs from the instrumentation that he mentions in his correspondence. Magical though it be, someone has clearly meddled with the composition to whatever degree.

I had lazily allowed dust to settle on this disc on the basis of a half-hearted listen and the tepid review in the Penguin Guide. Karl Bohm's 1966 recording of the Sinfonia Concertante is a star in my firmament and the opening ritornello in the adagio of this later performance is less celestial. Even so, I was always going to return to this recording to fathom out why it was a fizzer in my mind. This much I knew: Vonk's survey of Mozart overtures is superlative (Mozart: 11 Overtures), the Staatskapelle Dresden is one of the world's great orchestras and little needs to be said of Sabine Meyer, she who "launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium".

Anyway, I dusted it off recently only to discover what a dullard I had been. These are sensational performances. They made me think anew about both works. The throaty growl of a basset clarinet with its lower register is a joy to behold.

In the Clarinet Concerto, Vonk progressively unmuzzles the orchestra in the Allegro in wait for 7'26" where he really let's fly: it's masterly. I had dismissively thought that the slow movement was perfunctory but upon relistening to it, they're keeping their powder dry until 3'46" where it becomes fathomless - and why should it be played unremittingly like an elegy? If the Fates had been kinder, Mozart could have lived another three decades. Much the same could be said of the concluding Rondo: this is no Mozart who is writing a Requiem for himself - it's the Mozart who merrily troops down to the Theater auf der Wieden for another performance of the Magic Flute: "Quiet, quiet! Hofer is just taking her top F; now my sister-in-law is singing her second aria, 'Der Hölle Rache'; how strongly she strikes and holds the B-flat: 'Hört! hört! hört! der Mutter Schwur!'".

The Sinfonia Concertante is slightly less memorable than the Clarinet Concerto but it's still first rate. The Allegro is strong and direct. The final variation in the last movement is startling in its pungency. One of charges leveled against a Mozartian authorship of the work is its repetitiveness: in response, the soloists improvise to an unheralded degree in the second half of the Adagio. Meyer also belies the old accusation from her buddies in the Berlin Philharmonic that she is a dyed-in-the-wool soloist; she seamlessly melds her timbre with the three other instrumentalists, all of whom play with great sensitivity and character.

Throughout this disc, one is enthralled by the virtuosity of the Staatskapelle Dresden. Karajan once likened their sonority to `old gold'. One can understand why.

The second movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in this recording is perhaps the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard.

I received the CD on time and it was in excellent condition.

The music is beautiful. Sabine Meyer,Diethelm Jonas, Sergio Azzolini,

Bruno Schneider,conducted by Hans Vonk were very expertly performed. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart CD is beautiful.

Her playing is brilliant, and so is her tone.

And very accurate in terms of the written score too. And her tone is so dark especially in the bass. She uses the German system, i.e. using a string instead of a clip for holding the weed. Her tone is nonetheless more sweet than bitter. That makes one wonders how that kind of tone could be transcendental? And whether that was the kind of tone that appealed to Mozart so much?

More seasoned audience may prefer Carl Leister, a real German maestro. His tone may not be that bright, but he mixes perfectly well with the other woodwinds and the orchestra and more importantly, his playing is poetic.

Nearly all great musicians are poetic particularly those of the older generation, including Dohnanyi (composer/pianist), Casals, Rachmaninoff, Cortot, Bartok, Rubinstein, Rampal, Arrau, Richter, Michelangeli: their tempi are never that rigid, and their scales are never that "perfectly" even. Not even Heifetz or Backhaus, Rachmaninoff or Gilel or Glenn Gould or even Pletnev (Kissin is perhaps an exception)... Yet, they are so full of life, vivid and effective. Well, when Carl Leister comes to the second movement of thesame concerto, like these great muscians of the past, his sweet-bitter tone is apt to break your heart...

Sure the Sabine has music in her pocket. Does she really play from her heart? Doesn't she sounds more like a small part of a big machine that turns around at the dictation of Karajan's baton? With her tone is so outstanding, her tempi so metronome correct and her playing so cautious... So, what is her statement ( or personal interpretation ) on this piece of music? And where is the poetry??

All in all, I rate Meyer one star lower than Galway the flutist albeit the style of the two are so close.