Vintage Woodwinds (2000)

These nifty performances on America's leading label for wind instrument performance are worth at least a serving of dumplings and strudel.(This pair of short three-movement concert pieces originated in a deal made by Mendelssohn with Heinrich Baermann and his son Carl Baermann: Both were excellent clarinet and basset horn players, and Carl was a fine cook. Mendelssohn wrote the pieces in one day while Carl was back in Mendelssohn's kitchen making Dampfnudel (sweet dumplings) and Rahmstrudel (cheese strudel).)Performances of ... Read More

These nifty performances on America's leading label for wind instrument performance are worth at least a serving of dumplings and strudel.(This pair of short three-movement concert pieces originated in a deal made by Mendelssohn with Heinrich Baermann and his son Carl Baermann: Both were excellent clarinet and basset horn players, and Carl was a fine cook. Mendelssohn wrote the pieces in one day while Carl was back in Mendelssohn's kitchen making Dampfnudel (sweet dumplings) and Rahmstrudel (cheese strudel).)Performances of the pieces are rare because the basset horn went out of use for well over a century. The late 20th Century's interest in period instruments has revived it. This performance is by the Saeculum Aureum Players, three musicians with connections to the original instruments movement in the Northwest United States. They are clarinetist Richard Spece, who plays an original Mollenhauser clarinet made around 1825; William McColl, who plays a replica instrument he made himself from an 1815... Read Less