Emma Johnson has come a long way since winning the BBC Young
Musician of the Year award in 1984, even picking up an MBE in
1996, but her many recordings have never before included Brahms'
brace of Sonatas op.120. If that suggests categorisation under
"collectors' item", certainly no one is likely
to be disappointed by any of the ingredients - music, performances,
audio quality - of this new release.
Johnson and the hugely experienced British pianist John Lenehan
have recorded together previously (review).
Here they give invigorative performances of great charm and
intimacy from beginning to end. There’s natural and instinctive
responsiveness to each other. This offers, for example, a controlled
yet farm-fresh account of the Brahms Sonatas, magisterially
articulated and elegantly paced.
The Nash Ensemble have just released an all-Schumann disc on
Hyperion (CDA67923), and their clarinettist Richard Hosford
and pianist Ian Brown offer what is bound to be an immediate
rival to Johnson and Lenehan's Phantasiestücke. On the
whole though there are many more top-class cello version recordings
of this work than there are for clarinet. David Shifrin and
Carol Rosenberger recorded it with the two Brahms Sonatas on
Delos twenty years back now (DE3025). This was actually a recreation
of Clara Schumann's 'musical soirée' of
1894, when Brahms himself played piano to dedicatee Richard
Mühlfeld's clarinet in the two Sonatas, whilst Clara
and Mühlfeld performed the Phantasiestücke.
Johnson and Lenehan trump Shifrin and Rosenberger here with
a surprise package of delightful proportions. Not everyone familiar
with the core works by Brahms and Schumann will have heard the
fifteen-year-old Mendelssohn's E flat Sonata, twenty
minutes of almost mind-boggling lyrical fertility that make
it as plain as daylight that young Felix had more innate musical
genius than young Wolfgang. It provides an injection of youthful
vivacity between the more reflective, wistful works of Brahms
and Schumann. The Sonata has only been recorded a few times
previously - Henk de Graaf's recent version on Brilliant
Classics is the budget-price leader (92219), a double-disc also
including the Phantasiestücke. Johnson and Lenehan though surely
zoom to the top of the list for both works.
They have much more competition in the Sonatas, perhaps too
much for any distinctions other than on personal taste to be
made. This Nimbus release is more generous of timing
than most. The coupling also makes for a strong sense of historical
coherence where it may lack the serendipity delivered by Clarinet
Sonatas like Hans Gál's op.84 (Campanella C130052), Gustav
Jenner's op.5 (Atma ACD 22358) or Max Reger's
own op.49 pair (Zigzag ZZT 0303012).
The appeal of excellent interpretations like these is still
sometimes tarnished by inferior engineering, but here sound
quality is very good - possibly just a little sec.
It may be worth mentioning that this is not a Nimbus recording
as such: "Nimbus Alliance is a new classical record label
created to offer international distribution to recordings licensed
to Nimbus Records but not originated by the company although
this one was recorded by Nimbus." The CD booklet is 'old-school'
neat, informative and refreshingly modest, with detailed notes
on the works by Johnson herself.
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at reviews.gramma.co.uk
Emma Johnson (clarinet)