Weber reviews

The Rite of Spring does not dominate here, not because the performance is lame. Rather, it is part of something truly exceptional, joined here by masterpieces from Webern, Berg and Ligeti in performances of outstanding beauty, passion and power. This film captures a concert at the Barbican from January 2015, when the public courtship between the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle was still ongoing and their artistic marriage not yet certain.

Though annoyingly some of the roles have different singers from speakers, it is still a good enough recording to generate enthusiasm for an absurdly neglected masterpiece. As with all these recordings, there is no libretto nor sign to one online.

Michael Tanner

Both well worth exploring, two fine voices are brought together here: the fruity bass of Van Mill, and the dark-toned bass-baritone Edelmann, particularly admired in Wagner.

George Hall

People who want the Mozart and Weber clarinet concertos generally prefer them coupled with other Mozart and Weber clarinet works – not interspersed with solo clarinet miniatures in a boldly 21st-century idiom. But as a portrait of Jörg Widmann, the superbly imaginative German virtuoso clarinettist and composer, it does add up. Widmann’s Three Shadow Dances skilfully display different aspects of ‘extended’ woodwind techniques – microtones, harmonics, percussive key strokes etc – which will entertain some listeners more than others.

Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter) took Europe by storm in 1821 and inspired a host of other composers, especially Wagner. It tells the tale of Max the assistant forester, who makes a deal with the devil to ensure his hunting prowess will win the hand of Agathe, the chief forester’s attractive daughter. Increasingly, producers stage this opera as a creaky relic, merely camping up its mix of rustic and supernatural.

Most recordings of Weber’s three works for clarinet and orchestra manage to accommodate a further item. The classic EMI version by Sabine Meyer, for instance, includes an orchestral transcription of the Clarinet Quintet, as does the scarcely less fine account by the Swedish clarinettist Martin Fröst (BIS), while Michael Collins offers the Concertino for horn (see above). So you may feel short-changed by the present CD, which does without an additional item, particularly since the performances themselves are less than compelling.

Weber’s clarinet pieces, virtually all of them written for the virtuoso Heinrich Bärmann, call not only for technical proficiency, but also extreme refinement of tone throughout the instrument’s range. The F minor First Concerto, for instance, has a dark and dramatic opening movement and a finale in characteristically perky style, but its most memorable moment is a long hushed passage in the slow movement that finds the soloist’s long drawn-out melody accompanied only by an ensemble of three horns.