Haydn's student Ignace Joseph Pleyel was nearly as prolific as his Austrian parents (he was one of 38 children), and not all of the various attempts to revive his work have found music worth reviving. His music remains mostly unknown, and instrumentalists and ensembles haven't sorted through it to find the gems. This effort by virtuoso German clarinetist Dieter Klöcker, who also wrote the rather abstract but cogent booklet notes, is one of the best contributions yet. The clarinet was a new instrument in Pleyel's time, and ...
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Haydn's student Ignace Joseph Pleyel was nearly as prolific as his Austrian parents (he was one of 38 children), and not all of the various attempts to revive his work have found music worth reviving. His music remains mostly unknown, and instrumentalists and ensembles haven't sorted through it to find the gems. This effort by virtuoso German clarinetist Dieter Klöcker, who also wrote the rather abstract but cogent booklet notes, is one of the best contributions yet. The clarinet was a new instrument in Pleyel's time, and was undergoing rapid change. It is disappointing that the buyer does not learn exactly when these pieces were composed, but the Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in B flat major was named by an earlier clarinetist, Jost Michaels, as the most important concerto prior to that of Mozart, in 1791. The work has been transcribed here to B flat major, although it was published in 1799 for a C clarinet; Klöcker argues that the C major version had the purely commercial aim of being playable on a flute...
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