Review: Gershwin, Copland: The Clarinet Album (Ottensamer)
Andreas Ottensamer is one of these frustrating overachievers who are obscenely good at everything. Born into a family of clarinetists, the Viennese wunderkind walked away from Harvard to pursue a career in the Berlin Philharmonic where, at the tender age of 24, he now occupies the principal post in his section. It’s a mystery how the first solo clarinetist ever to be signed to the Yellow Label also manages to model part-time and keep up his game in the football club he founded: the Wiener Virtuosen. I don’t want to penalise Ottensamer for his abundant gifts, but his Deutsche Grammophon debut Portraits just seems a little too perfect, much like the chiselled features highlighted on the album cover. Amongst these diverse musical portraits were a few leaky watercolours but not enough to spoil the exhibition; Ottensamer’s articulation is so flawlessly legato that occasionally it’s difficult to shake the ear out of its reverie, especially in the arrangement of Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin. Copland’s pointillistic, madcap concerto glides smoothly by in the slow opening movement, until the cadenza kicks in – dazzling, if a little cautious in comparison, for example, with Martin Fröst’s plucky, devil-may-care version, which accelerates…