Brahms: The Hungarian Connection - Andreas Ottensamer

Andreas Ottensamer - Brahms: Two Waltzes (+ English interview)

02:02

Classic FM Album of the Week, 30 March 2015, after 10am.

This is a superb new recording from the young Austrian clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer, who is principle clarinet with the Berlin Philharmonic. 

Here, he teams up with a distinguished string quartet led by the superb violinist Leonidas Kavakos to give a full-blooded account of Brahms's Clarinet Quintet as well as offering a selection of other Hungarian and gypsy works that may have inspired the great composer. 

Brahms's two Hungarian Dances and Two Waltzes in A major included here sound particularly authentic, the latter almost Viennese coffee house in its smoothness, as does the final Transylvanian free-for-all in which Brahms rubs shoulders with some of Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances.