Mozart's chamber works with clarinet are the first significant ones for the instrument and both are masterpieces. Each of them has the mellowness that one associates with the instrument—at least in its earlier repertory, for later composers like Berlioz, Richard Strauss and Stravinsky also made much of its brilliant upper register—and one feels that for Mozart it was most at home in the alto and mezzo soprano range. He was, in any case, writing for the basset clarinet, which went four semitones lower than a modern instrument.
Walter Boeykens is an excellent clarinettist who possesses a warm yet delicate tone and the ability to shape a phrase elegantly as well as encompass busy passagework. His chosen colleagues do not share his effortless fluency, as we can hear in some of the semiquaver passagework in the first movement of the Quintet, but they are good players none the less and this is an affectionate, enjoyable performance. However, for my own taste the slow movement is too romanticized with its occasional tonal swells and string portamentos, it is also taken slower than by some ensembles, although the marking Larghetto may justify this. The Minuet, too, comes from the same stable in being warm rather than dance-like. The recording calls our attention to the richness of Mozart's textures but not everyone will complain about that.
The ''Skittle Alley'' Trio got its name because Mozart is supposed to have had his first musical ideas for it while bowling at a friend's house. Here, the viola joins the clarinet in bringing warmth to the music overall, but there's plenty of variety in these three movements. The three artists play the work fluently and quite sensitively; however, they could find more subtlety and charm for the melody playing and the performance does not go far enough beyond sound musicianship to have distinction. Furthermore, I am not sure that it is only the fault of the recording that the dynamic range lacks extremes and that much of the sound is in the mezzo forte to forte range. In all, this is a pleasing disc but at full-price hardly an indispensable one.'