Weber: Clarinet Concerto no. 1, Clarinet Concertino, Bassoon Concerto, Horn Concertino
Maximiliano Martín, clarinet; Peter Whelan, bassoon; Alec Frank-Gemmill, horn; Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Alexander Janiczek, conductor.
Linn CKD409. Recorded 5–9 September 2011, Usher Hall, Edinburgh. CD.
Weber’s wind concertos occupy a peculiar and underappreciated corner of the early Romantic repertoire—works that sit just at the cusp of something larger, more operatic, more dramatically consequential than their Classical predecessors, yet never quite tip over into the full-blown theatrical world of Der Freischütz. They were written for specific players, with specific physical characteristics and technical predilections in mind, and that intimacy between composer and performer shows in every bar. The music is tailor-made, flattering, occasionally brilliant, and here—in the hands of three Scottish Chamber Orchestra principals and their concertmaster-turned-maestro Alexander Janiczek—it gets playing of genuine distinction.
Start with Maximiliano Martín.
The Clarinet Concerto no. 1 in F Minor opens with an orchestral exposition of some weight and promise, and when the soloist enters—that first long ascending phrase, testing the instrument’s chalumeau register against the strings—Martín immediately establishes something worth paying attention to: a tone that is warm without being pillowy, focused without any of the thin, reedy astringency that can afflict players who push too hard for projection. He shapes the melody as a singer would, with genuine breath behind it, and his passagework in the first movement’s development section has clarity and direction rather than mere velocity. The slow movement is lovely—genuinely so, not just technically accomplished. Martín finds something wistful in it, a quality that suggests Weber already half-imagining Agathe at her window. The finale’s Polonaise rhythm gets crisp, buoyant treatment, though I wished occasionally for just a touch more abandon, a little more willingness to let the dance pull slightly ahead of itself.
The Clarinet Concertino in C Minor—that strange, mercurial single-movement piece that begins in brooding minor and ends in a kind of pastoral E-flat sunshine—suits Martín even better. Nine minutes of music that passes through more emotional weather than many a three-movement work. He navigates the tonal shift with absolute naturalness, as if the modulation were inevitable rather than calculated.
Peter Whelan’s Bassoon Concerto is a revelation. The bassoon is chronically underserved as a concerto instrument—even Vivaldi’s hundreds of concertos for it tend to be treated as curiosities rather than repertoire staples—and Weber’s single example, written for the Munich court bassoonist Georg Friedrich Brandt, is easily the finest bassoon concerto between Mozart and the twentieth century. Whelan plays with extraordinary character. His tone in the lower register has real body, almost a cello-like gravitas, and his upper-register playing avoids the tendency toward thinness that plagues many bassoonists when the writing climbs. The slow movement—marked Andante ma adagio, a hedged tempo instruction that itself suggests Weber’s uncertainty about how soulful to allow things to become—is beautifully judged, unhurried, and the Rondo finale has genuine wit. Whelan finds the jokes. Not every bassoonist does.
Alec Frank-Gemmill’s Horn Concertino is perhaps the most technically demanding piece on the disc. Weber wrote it in 1806 for the legendary horn player Giovanni Punto, a virtuoso of the natural horn, and the writing pushes the instrument toward its limits—hand-stopping techniques that create those characteristic half-muffled, half-veiled tones that no modern valve horn can quite replicate, however skillfully a player adjusts. Frank-Gemmill plays a modern instrument, which is simply the practical reality of modern concert life, and he plays it magnificently—clean, centered tone, outstanding breath management through the long melodic spans, and a genuine sense of the piece’s quasi-operatic dimensions. The central Romanza is particularly fine. But I confess that hearing this piece on a period instrument, with all its attendant roughness and risk, remains an experience apart. That’s not a criticism of Frank-Gemmill. It’s simply an acknowledgment that something is irretrievably different.
Janiczek leads the SCO with admirable lightness and energy. The orchestra responds with playing that is alert and stylistically idiomatic—the strings have the right kind of lean, transparent quality for this repertoire, and the wind ensemble playing in tutti passages shows just how good these players are collectively, not merely as soloists. The Usher Hall recording is spacious without being cavernous, and the DSD source material gives the disc a presence and warmth that serve the music well. Solo instruments sit naturally within the ensemble rather than being artificially projected forward, which matters enormously in music where the relationship between soloist and orchestra is genuinely conversational rather than hierarchical.
This is, by any measure, a distinguished release. Not every moment achieves the final degree of interpretive intensity—I’ve heard the Clarinet Concerto played with more fire, more willingness to court a certain recklessness—but the consistent quality of musicianship across four works, the evident care and intelligence in the preparation, and the sheer pleasure of hearing these pieces played at this level make the disc easy to recommend. Weber’s wind concertos deserve this kind of advocacy. They’ve waited long enough for it.
