Campbell's choice of three concertos is a clever one, for while Weber owes much to Mozart, Copland is with this concerto to some extent a modern Weber. There is the melancholy character, coming out as blues-influenced melodies, and the brilliant high spirits, here jazzy and infectious without any loss of intellectual control. Benny Goodman was a fine Weber player, and could give his finales a neat little jazzy lilt. Campbell plays Copland's Concerto splendidly, with a nice kick to its rhythms and a strong sense of melodic line. He is simple and direct in Mozart's (which he plays on a modern A clarinet, not the now prevalent basset clarinet), drawing eloquent phrases and responding to the harmonic inflexions in the first movement with suitable darkening and lightening of tone-colour. The finale is lively, and cheerfully done without affectation. He plays Weber's Concertino in, it seems, the edition by Pamela Weston that goes back to Weber's original version (with some suitable editings of phrasing: Weber was in a rush, and it shows); he does, however, use the Baermann cadenza. This is a delightful performance.
Andrew Marriner, playing all three Weber concertante works with orchestra, uses the Baermann editions, which are fairly cavalier with Weber's intentions: there is, notoriously, an unauthorized added passage in the opening movement of the First Concerto as well as some rewriting of the figuration and other changes. None of these changes does very serious damage to Weber's intentions, but they were not Weber's intentions. Marriner plays with much spirit. He is nicely mock-mournful in the slow movement of this concerto and in the Concertino, and draws a very smooth line in the Andante con moto of No. 2. Marriner pere et fils are very much at one with the recitative passage here, which comes off admirably. Very occasionally fils appears to be pressing pere a little, but the experienced hand keeps matters controlled as well as lively. The final applause music of No. 2 is splendidly done; in that to No. 1, fate is tempted with a piu mosso for the last 32 bars, which Weber would surely have enjoyed: the clarinet makes it safely home—by a whisker.'