Search - Hummel, Dvorak, Hindemith :: Flute Sonatas

The great clarinetist Karl Leister has recorded the Mozart Quintet at least four times, including two versions done only a year apart (1981 and 1982). This is the 1981 recording, and it's not his best. All the players are alert and capture all the details in the music, but the poetry seems to evaporate. Weber's Clarinet Quintet is rather superficial stuff, so the playing here does it no harm. The real news item is the Mozart Quintet fragment, eight minutes of music in a performing edition by Robert Levin. It sounds like real Mozart, and the performance--recorded years later than the rest of the disc--is excellent. Is it worthwhile paying import price for eight minutes of Mozart? Maybe. --Leslie Gerber