CRUSELL Clarinet Quartets: in E♭, op. 2; in c, op. 4; in D, op. 7 • László Horváth (cl); Dumas Tr • HUNGAROTON 32570 (69:32)

This is the second recording of Crusell’s complete clarinet quartets that I’ve received in the past year; I reviewed the not-at-all brilliant Brilliant Classics version by Henk de Graaf in Fanfare 32: 3. The arrival of this disc by Horváth brought back memories: one of my favorite clarinet recordings for many years has been a collection of early concertos by J. M. Molter and Johann and Karl Stamitz, played by Horváth on a 1979 Hungaroton LP; on the back of the jacket is a photo of the slim, dark-bearded clarinetist. Well, Horváth is white-haired and clean-shaven now, but he is still a stylish player, if not as consistent as he was three decades ago. His technique, at least, seems not to have suffered from the passage of time.

Readers familiar with the clarinet music of Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1775–1838) know that he was a gifted early-Romantic composer who wrote three concertos for his own instrument in addition to the three quartets given here. The concertos seem to have fared better on disc. While there have been several recorded versions of the three quartets, none is completely satisfactory. (I repeat here the caveat from my previous review: I have not heard the 1997 version by Osmo Vänskä, now better-known as the principal conductor for BIS’s Sibelius Edition and the music director of the Minnesota Orchestra.) The most rewarding versions are individual recordings of the E♭-Major and C-Minor by Karl Leister, both unfortunately out of print.

As for the present versions, the CD presents the C-Minor Quartet first, then the E♭-Major, and finally the D-Major. All three works were recorded in a five-day period in July 2008, but Hungaroton doesn’t specify the order of recording. Curiously, though, Horváth seems to improve as the disc progresses. In the C-Minor, his playing lacks the coloristic range he once had; he seems to be playing on a light mouthpiece-reed setup that produces an attractive enough sound, but allows for little flexibility or subtlety. In the flashier, more technically demanding E♭-Major, the sound is firmer. This work, composed around 1811, the same time as Weber’s clarinet concertos, features a lovely Romanze that seems to bear the influence of the younger composer’s music. In the D-Major, written for the darker A clarinet, Horváth sounds the best of all. At almost a half hour’s duration, this is also the most musically ambitious of the three works.

The American violinist Joseph Puglia, Dutch violist Chaim Steller, and Hungarian cellist Őrs Kőszeghy comprise the Dumas Trio; all, still in their twenties, are first-rate chamber partners. The recorded sound is full and reverberant, but pleasingly so, and not so much that the individual lines are blurred. We still need a recording of these works by a top-drawer international clarinetist—and I don’t believe any American clarinetist has taken them on; but in the meantime, this is easily the strongest entry in a mediocre field. Recommended until something better comes along.

FANFARE: Richard A. Kaplan