Search - Carl Maria von Weber, Ingolf Dahl, Pierre Sancan :: Harold Wright Recital No. 2

A classic performance meets a first recording

04/04/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This CD combines the works of quite a distinct bunch of styles and periods, all performed by the late legendary clarinetist Harold Wright and his colleagues from the Marlboro Music Festival. The CD opens with the Weber Duo Concertante, a showy and dramatic Romantic-era work. The performance on this CD is otherwise quite good, but is marred by a couple of technical errors made by the pianist, Luis Batlle, in the last movement. There is no such difficulty with the rest of the works. The Dahl selection is, as far as I can tell, the premiere recording of this work. I have to say that it grows on one, although it is difficult to reach at first. The performance is dramatic and expressive and is everything one could hope for. The final work on the CD is the Schubert Shepherd on the Rock, with Rudolf Serkin and Benita Valente. This is a truly great performance. Nobody has done it better. Nobody is ever likely to do it better. If you don't sing to the hills after this one, you have no soul."