Paul Meyer - Louis Spohr - The Forgotten Master: The 4 Clarinet Concertos (2012) CD-Rip

The four clarinet concertos by Louis Spohr (1784–1859) have fared well on disc, relatively speaking. Notorious for their difficulty, these works have been slow to win champions among top-flight clarinetists, but the tide is turning. Paul Meyer is a French clarinetist—no relation, apparently, to the German siblings Sabine and Wolfgang Meyer who has recorded a number of CDs on various labels including Denon and EMI. For Alpha he has previously recorded the clarinet chamber music of Schumann. I believe the present recording, in which he also serves as conductor, is his first in that capacity.
One of the first things one notices about these performances is the tempos. Meyer plays these works consistently faster than either Collins or Karl Leister (Orfeo); I have not heard the Naxos versions by Ernst Ottensamer. Meyer’s tempos in Allegro movements are fearsome, his playing fleet and flashy, with formidable fingerwork and machine-gun tonguing. Only occasionally do the tempos seem to reduce the potential subtlety. In the slow movements Meyer plays Spohr’s long-spun phrases exquisitely; especially notable is his lovely pianissimo playing. Many passages feature solo winds in the orchestra, and take on an intimate, chamber-like quality with the integration of Meyer’s playing into the orchestral texture. Meyer’s sound is light and sweet in comparison to, say, Leister’s big, plummy tone or Collins’s fine but more generic clarinet sound.
In fact, there’s little fault to be found with any of the three versions; in a way they complement one another, representing three different clarinet sound-concepts but equally valid interpretive approaches. If you’re really serious about these pieces you should have the single EMI disc including performances of No. 2 by Julian Bliss and No. 4 by Sabine Meyer; otherwise it’s really a matter of taste.