When last year this recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto first appeared, with Sabine Meyer joined by Claudio Abbado conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, I counted it even finer than Meyer’s earlier Dresden version (EMI, 3/92). Recorded live in the Berlin Philharmonie, it confirmed in every way how her individual artistry has intensified in the intervening 10 years.
Though speeds are on the fast side, Meyer finds time to point phrasing and to shade dynamics even more seductively than before, always conveying a feeling of spontaneous expression. The Berlin accompaniment too is light and transparent. In that initial issue of the recording the only reservation was that the unusual coupling of pieces by Debussy and Takemitsu – also with Meyer as an inspired soloist – might for many have made the disc less attractive. This re-coupling of the Clarinet Concerto with two other Mozart concertos, also with Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic, fills an obvious need, providing apt couplings in generous measure. If anyone objects to the omission of the second Mozart Flute Concerto (included on the original disc in 1997), the obvious point to make is that unlike K313, that companion work, K314, was first written for the oboe and then transcribed.
In the Concerto for flute and harp as well as the solo concerto Pahud makes a dazzling impression, with his lightness and agility at speeds faster than usual prompting elegant accompaniment from the not-too-large orchestra. His delicate pointing of rhythm and phrase in slow movements reveals a most imaginative artist. Not helped by a backward recording balance, the harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet emerges as less distinctive if always sensitive. Good Berlin recording in all three works