CCMusic.com

Whether melting away like a singing gondolier on the Grand Canal or tumbling about like a Eulenspiegel, whether clucking melancholically in the depths like a brooding hen or bouncing acrobatically across the high wire: after the clarinet had outgrown it's infant shoes, it was soon "on everyone's lips" thanks to it's rapidly expanding possibilities-praised by enthusiastic advocates like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, technically advanced by new virtuosos, and entrusted with the most varied tasks by experiment-loving composers. In the front ranks of these pioneers stood Carl Stamitz, one of the first second-generation Mannheimers, who wrote nearly a dozen concertante works tailored to the instrument's slender body, thereby leaving the guild of clarinetists a precious little catechism that can now be heard complete on recording for the first time.