When planning this record, I wonder what streak of perversity prompted Richard Stoltzman to include only one work originally designed for clarinet? That, of course, is the set of Fanta.sie stücke, Op. 73, launching the series of miniatures Schumann wrote for various instruments in early 1849, while relaxing after the Strain of larger undertakings like his opera, Genoveva, and incidental music for Byron's Manfred. The layout of the clarinet part tells us how clearly his imagination was fired by the instrument's tonal range, and it reveals Stoltzman at his most persuasive. I enormously enjoyed his fluid phrasing, his superfine dynamic nuances and, last but not least, the way he unifies the three pieces as a suite travelling in mood from nostalgia to the hope that springs eternal in the human breast. Nor is it possible to over-praise the intimate interweaving of clarinet and piano. Richard Goode is a partner in a thousand here—as indeed throughout the recital. Though the three Op. 94 Romances (also of 1849) were originally intended for oboe, Schumann himself sanctioned the clarinet or violin as possible alternatives. Perhaps it's because of the piano's essential contribution to the first and last pieces that they lose little of their character in the transfer—especially the last in Marchen style. All three are again most sensitively shaded by both artists even if in observing Schumann's fastish metronome marking For the cradle-song-like second, they sacrifice just a little of the requested lnnigkeit.

The recital is completed by the first two of the 19-year-old Schubert's three Sonatinas in transcriptions (with no transposition and only minimal adjustments elsewhere) by Stoltzman himself. Because of the often high-lying line in the clarinet's thinner upper register, these emerge just a little chillier than from the violin, with its vibrato to give a touch of extra vibrancy in song. The development section of the A minor Sonata's opening Allegro is perhaps the best example. In the D major Sonata's Andante the players very occasionally enrich the line with small embellishments of their own—as they also do at the fermata, before the last return of the leading theme, in the A minor Sonata's concluding Rondo. The overall impression is of hearing both these works as it were in translation. But the playing is again first rate in its suavity and tonal refinement no less than its spirit. The recording itself certainly could not be more clear and true.

-- J.O.C., Gramophone [9/1989]