The Trio tends to be the neglected one among the great clarinet works from Brahms’s mellow last period, usually coupled with the Clarinet Quintet as though it is a poor relation. That is grossly unfair to a work which, while maybe not on such a grand scale as the Quintet, has over its four compact movements both profundity and charm. BIS, however, has put it with the Sonatas, works on a scale closer to the Trio, and an excellent and successful coupling it is.

Young Swedish clarinettist Martin Fröst has established himself as a leading soloist, appearing with many of the most important European orchestras and inspiring works from composers including Penderecki. He tends to favour speeds on the fast side in the Trio, which means that the second movement Andante may lack the meditative depth one finds with Thea King on Hyperion but which has an easy flow. The dramatic bite and thrust of the outer movements is enhanced by relatively urgent speeds, with the coda of the first fading away on a ghostly scalic passage.

Cellist Torleif Thedéen matches Fröst in imaginative playing but pianist Roland Pöntinen, placed backward in the recording balance, is less individual. That is even more noticeable in the sonatas, where he cannot match Daniel Barenboim, whose performances with Gervase de Peyer have made a very welcome reappearance on Classics for Pleasure.

Michael Collins’s and Mikhail Pletnev’s sonatas disc (Virgin, 5/90 – nla) is outstanding and must surely be reissued. Thea King’s Helios budget version with Clifford Benson has only the sonatas, making a short-measure disc, but is otherwise excellent. That brings me back to the great merit of the BIS issue: it’s generously filled and the couplings are apt.