When reviewing Kilian Herold and the Armida Quartet’s recording of Johanna Senfter’s fine Clarinet Quintet, Richard Whitehouse hoped ‘that more of [her] music would be recorded’ (1/24) – and here it is. Senfter (1879-1961) was born into a wealthy family in Germany; her musical gifts were recognised early, and she attended Frankfurt’s Hoch Conservatory (1895-1903), studying composition with Iwan Knorr, and at the Leipzig Conservatory (1908 10) with Reger, who described her as his ‘best pupil’. She composed over 130 works, including nine symphonies, though the focus of this enterprising double album is her chamber music. Some readers may have seen that she was a BBC Radio 3 Composer of the Week in March.

The stylistic roots of Senfter’s music lay in the warmly romantic world of late Brahms and Reger, as did (a decade or two later) the earliest works of Hindemith, who also studied at the Hoch Conservatory. Senfter developed in a very different direction from her younger compatriot, however, as can be heard by comparing their Clarinet Quintets. Senfter’s is relatively late, from 1950 (the year before Hindemith revised his iconoclastic work of 1923), its three compact movements running to 20 minutes – half the length of Reger’s (the coupling for Herold and the Armida). The Else Ensemble (clarinettist Shelly Ezra is also the booklet annotator) seem completely at one with Senfter’s idiom, in what is a slightly gentler reading than that of Herold and the Armida, though the latter catch the accordion-like wheezing with which the opening Munter (‘lively’) finishes just right. Honours are even in the intense central Langsam and bittersweet finale. If pressed, I would give Herold/Armida the edge by the slightest of margins.

Senfter’s style did not evolve overmuch during her career, although the harmonic textures are leaner in the Quintet and the Easy Little Piano Trio (c1943) compared to the other works featured here. The first of her two piano quartets, composed probably in or around 1911 (the dating of many of Senfter’s manuscripts is approximate) has a Schumannesque lightness and ardour (derived via early Brahms, one presumes) which is refreshing – as in the enchanting Andante third movement (a set of variations) with its nippier central section. By the time Senfter composed her Sonata in D, Op 37 (aka Quartet Sonata; c1920), her sound world had moved along, late Brahms and – unsurprisingly – Reger rather, though the horn-writing, especially in the Rasch scherzo (placed second), reminded me of Strauss. There is an infectious bluster about the outer sections that makes me wonder whether this was a character portrait of some larger-than-life acquaintance. The interplay of the three alto soloists is very neatly rendered by Ezra, Kristian Katzenberger (horn) and Lena Eckels (viola), ably accompanied by Naaman Wagner, but in truth it is all there in Senfter’s beautifully balanced writing.

Ezra and Wagner combine well in the fine Clarinet Sonata (c1925; the work was premiered in 1932) and, with Katzenberger, in the delightful later G major Trio, Op 103 (c1943). Senfter always felt disadvantaged as a composer by being a woman, one reason why these splendid late-Romantic works have lain so long out of view, though they were out of step with the prevailing styles before and after the Second World War. The excellent musicians of the Else Ensemble do these works proud and CPO’s sound is superb.