Reicha’s chamber music turns up in the catalogue quite often, his copious concertante and symphonic works rather less so. Three of those represented here do not have the quirky originality that can sound intriguing, sometimes merely eccentric, in the wind quintets, and are cast in the familiar forms which composers of his time (1770-1836) could turn out easily enough on demand for passing virtuosos. They are quite testing: Sarah Willis does well with with the bounding line of the horn Introduction and Rondo, and Karl-Otto Hartmann makes some drily witty points with the bassoon Theme and Variations. Though he has quite a lively time of it with the Dittersdorf Clarinet Variations, it is in the Clarinet Concerto that Dieter Klöcker is more fully engaged with a piece that represents something of a rescue operation.

Briefly, the music consists of two incomplete outer movements, which Eberhard Buschmann has reconstituted with what is clearly a good deal of ingenuity, particularly in the shaping of a distinctly eccentric first movement. He has also written a slow introduction before setting off on a final Rondeau which, as a facsimile in the booklet reveals, inspires Klöcker to lavish ornamentation on the theme even at its first appearance. The missing slow movement is replaced here by the Andante from the Third Concerto by Iwan Müller, the brilliant itinerant clarinet virtuoso who reformed the instrument, irritated most of his colleagues, and inspired a good many concertos, including this one of Reicha’s. His own Andante is an odd piece, capable of darting off in unexpected directions, but suitable enough for the purpose. It was scored by Meyerbeer. So this is a piece of patchwork, scarcely justifying Buschmann’s claim that it can stand beside the concertos of Spohr and Weber, though it is shot through with flashes of entertaining music.