From high to contra-low

Last year, three clarinettists and a pianist made a virtue of the coronavirus emergency and recorded a concert with works by four Swiss composers from the Romantic period to the present day. It is extremely entertaining and stimulating to listen to because they use six different instruments of the clarinet family, plus a piano in three pieces. And: all the musicians are masters of their craft.

The very first work, Fantasy and Capriccio op. 13 for clarinet and piano by the forgotten Romantic composer August Walter is captivating: The Fantasy is reminiscent of Carl Maria von Weber, the Capriccio to Schumann. In this premiere recording, they are presented by Bernhard Röthlisberger (clarinet) and Benjamin Engeli (piano).

Röthlisberger also plays the beautiful Canto for bass clarinet (2012) by David Philip Hefti (*1975), where multiple sounds reminiscent of medieval polyphony appear. His internalized trio shows how Hefti skilfully combines baroque elements with contemporary ones Counterpoints on Come, Sweet Death (2000, after Bach's chorale Come, sweet death), sensitively interpreted by Röthlisberger, Nils Kohler and Ernesto Molinari. Two bass clarinets in dialog allow Röthlisberger and Kohler to play in Hefti's (T)raum-Ze(n)it (2008), whose complexly interlaced title already hints at what the composer is concerned with here: the connections between space and time, which can lead to unreal dream images.

Othmar Schoecks Andante E flat major WoO 35 for clarinet and piano is presented by Röthlisberger and Engeli as a premiere recording. It is astonishing that such a fascinating work from 1916 had to wait so long to be recorded. The repertoire, on the other hand, includes Schoeck's Sonata op. 41 for the same instrumentation from the border area between late Romanticism and extended tonality, excellently interpreted.

The Bernese composer Jean-Luc Darbellay (*1946) is represented with two characteristic works: Sentences, written in 2009 as a compulsory piece for the Concours National d'Exécution Musicale de Riddes and arranged for basset clarinet in 2020, nine pieces, some of them very short, that encourage listeners to reflect and think about music. The same applies to Darbellay's Chant d'adieux (1998), which he premiered as a clarinettist with his wife Elisabeth at Wartburg Castle near Eisenach: wonderfully calm, delicate music that one would like to hear again and again.