Of many famous soloists associated with the Mozart concerto I remember particularly the account of Gervase de Peyer, who played for Beecham with a memorably rich timbre, and Pat Ryan of the Hallé, whose tone was thinner and who also often played music written for the A clarinet on his B flat instrument, not wanting the bother of making the change but transposing the music note by note. The present memorable Mozart performance by Michael Collins uses the basset clarinet, which has extra notes at the bottom of its register, making the solo part much more effective, besides adding tonal richness throughout.

Elena Kats-Chernin (born in Taskent) wrote her Ornamental Air after emigrating to Australia. Its model was Mozart’s concerto but its solo writing also takes advantage of the wider range of the basset clarinet, besides using Baroque lyricism and influences from jazz, rock and folk music. The strongly rhythmic first movement, often scattily unpredictable, initially uses a 5/4 tempo, then a cadenza leads into a voluptuous bluesy melody, derived at a distance from Liszt’s Third Liebestraum. The finale then returns to the scherzando style, now in syncopated 4/4 time, before another cadenza brings a final outburst of virtuosity. Throughout, Michael Collins in is his element, relishing every twist and turn of the music’s consistently imaginative invention.

Copland’s two-movement Concerto for clarinet, string orchestra and piano, written for Benny Goodman, divides into a dozen subsections but opens and ends radiantly, although before the close its jazz inflections dominate. The central cadenza acts as a linking device and the second movement is structured in free-rondo form. A second cadenza ends the piece jazzily and produces a fine glissando. Again Michael Collins is just as at home here as he is in the Mozart and Kats-Chernin, directing the Swedish Chamber Orchestra with idiomatic panache.