Nielsen: Concerto for Clarinet / Grieg: Lyric Pieces

The Clarinet Concerto by the Danish composer Carl Nielsen is one of the absolute pillars of the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra. Austrian clarinettist Daniel Ottensamer associates very special memories with this work as 2009 winner of The Carl Nielsen International Clarinet Competition in Denmark with this concerto. Ottensamer was 23 years old at the time, and had long held the prestigious post as the Vienna Philharmonic's principal clarinettist.

In addition to the concerto by Nielsen, this album also includes fantasy for clarinet and piano, accompanied by his long-standing piano partner Christoph Traxler. Ottensamer also worked with Traxler on Grieg's "Lyric Pieces" for the album.

"The Nordic music of Edvard Grieg and Carl Nielsen, as well as the Scandinavian folk music, which served as the basis for each of these composers' masterpieces, has fascinated me since my earliest youth," says Daniel Ottensamer. "By comparing Carl Nielsen's complex clarinet concerto with Edvard Grieg's "Lyric Pieces", which are deeply touching due to their simplicity and plainness, I would like to shed light on the various facets of Nordic music and the associated different timbres of the clarinet."

Carl Nielsen wrote his clarinet concerto in 1928, three years before his death. Nielsen relied on a chamber music orchestral cast, with distinctive bassoon and horn passages. The snare drum is the most important instrument alongside the solo clarinet and fuels the battle of keys with wild rhythmic outbursts. The playing technique demands on the clarinettist turn out to be enormously high. The fantasy for clarinet and piano, on the other hand, is one of his early works. Nielsen was only between 16 and 18 years old when he demonstrated his early talent for composition with this brilliant imagination.