Several traits distinguish this recording of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581, and Brahms' Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115, from the numerous other similar pairings on the market. One is the presence of a third work, the Invention of contemporary Austrian composer Balduin Sulzer, composed in 2012 for clarinetist Matthias Schorn and the Minetti Quartet. This would by itself not be enough to recommend the recording, but the playing of Schorn, the principal clarinetist of the Vienna Philharmonic, is ...
Read More
Several traits distinguish this recording of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581, and Brahms' Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115, from the numerous other similar pairings on the market. One is the presence of a third work, the Invention of contemporary Austrian composer Balduin Sulzer, composed in 2012 for clarinetist Matthias Schorn and the Minetti Quartet. This would by itself not be enough to recommend the recording, but the playing of Schorn, the principal clarinetist of the Vienna Philharmonic, is something else again. This may be playing that applies stereotypes of Viennese lightness and charm retrospectively to Mozart and even to Brahms, but the concept is executed in a thorough way. Mozart's opening movement trips gracefully into the room, descending the stairs smoothly in its main theme, setting up the arpeggiated clarinet figure as a kind of delicate garden dance. The usual melancholy associated with the work is largely absent, but of course Mozart wasn't planning on dying young....
Read Less
