Movements from Mozart’s piano concertos, especially the slower ones, are often likened to his operatic arias. This comparison seems small beer when listening to the three clarinet concertos that Weber wrote and premiered with Munich virtuoso Heinrich Bärmann in 1811. Nothing short of a full-scale opera would stand comparison with the start of the First Concerto and the tutti burst of C major that disrupts the dark, lower-strings opening you might expect from a work in F minor. Then the soloist’s part throughout – in its colour, its unsparing use (for the player) of the added range of the latest clarinet models and its sheer joie de vivre – feels much like that of a singer.

The darker colours of this First Concerto and the three-movement Concertino are contrasted by the Second Concerto in the more heroic key of E flat. One might compare this work to the other end of Weber’s operas – the final reconciliation rather than the dark, supernatural side of Der Freischütz or the evocations of magic in Oberon. The soloist’s whole range continues to be tested and there are novel touches of orchestration (the divisi-strings start to the slow movement) and a passage of secco recitative. The Concertino for horn (written first when Weber was an experienced 19-year-old but revised in 1815 for another Munich virtuoso, Sebastian Rauch) is notable for its pedal notes, tricky horn chords and recitative cadenza.

Steffens and Collins play very different instruments in a very different way, most noticeably in the rather jazzy (or, more accurately, showband-style) grandstanding of the many interpolated high notes, intervals and cadenzas. Steffens (one-time principal of the Berlin Philharmonic) and the Bambergers seem to present a darker, quieter, more introverted Weber; the soloist’s tone, dynamics and tuning are compellingly subtle. It’s a very German dark Wald (wood) and there are demons in it as well as clowns. It makes a fine follow-up to Steffens’s disc of Mozart opera arrangements.

The Chandos release (literally, by the minute, better value) is more straightforward and sunny – bright and playful performances of the clarinet works (Michael Collins conducts them himself) and Stephen Stirling evidently enjoying himself in the Horn Concertino and its tricky cadenza.