“It’s hard to know whether the star of this release is Mozart, Elena Kats-Chernin, Michael Collins or perhaps more simply. The clarinet itself. It doesn’t matter, because its a winner whichever way you look at it... The engineering by Chandos is excellent. This is a fascinating and genuinely important release.”
Phil Carrick – Limelightmagazine.com – 16 April 2013
“...Throughout, Michael Collins is in his element, relishing every twist and turn of the music’s consistently imaginative invention ... Michael Collins is just as at home here [Copelands’s Concerto] as he is in the Mozart and Kats-Chernin, directing the Swedish Chamber Orchestra with idiomatic panache.”
Ivan March – Gramophone magazine – March 2013
“Mozart’s familiar Clarinet Concerto, played by Michael Collins on the extended, lower-note basset clarinet, receives a lively and expressive performance, with plenty of swing and sentiment. Collins’s range of colour and dynamics delight the ear, and his ornamentation and nimble note-finding have spontaneity on their side. The members of the Swedish Chamber orchestra provide vivid and characterful support... The finale is high-kicking with a ruminative cadenza and even more sprinting in the dash for home during which Collins is amazing.”
Colin Anderson – ClassicalSource.com – 16 February 2013
“Mozart’s late masterpiece really does deserve to be heard on the basset-clarinet, especially when the performance is as winning as here. Even more impressive is the performance of the Copeland concerto, which balances beauty and vitality to perfection ...” ****
Guy Weatherall - Classical Music magazine – February 2013
“...There’s no performance of Mozart’s 1791 Clarinet Concerto I’d rather hear than this. Michael Collins performs on a basset clarinet, a modern counterpart of the instrument Mozart had in mind when he conceived the concerto ... The hub of Collins’s performance is the central Adagio which, as he sails towards a zone of blissful lyricism – body and instrument vibrating in, quite literally, perfect harmony – becomes a joy to witness. And that same lyrical nous serves Collins well during the opening movement of Copeland’s 1948 Clarinet Concerto...”
Philip Clark –Sinfini Music.com – January 2013
“...Collins is better integrated with the orchestra than virtually any of his predecessors ... The sense of spontaneous, organic interplay between clarinet and orchestra is most welcome ... Few recordings on either period or modern instruments manage this interplay as well – and few orchestras, period or modern, manage a collective sense of phrasing as convincing as the Swedish Chamber Orchestra here, making this a strong recommendation. The ravishing opening pages of the Copeland are given their full quota of swoon and the collective phrasing of the orchestral strings is consistently excellent - again the chamber-music qualities of this performance are a particular delight... Collins proves a strong and committed advocate for the work...”
Carl Rosman – International Record Review – January 2013
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