Arthur Stockel’s New Weber Album for Aparté

Clarinetist Arthur Stockel on the cover of his debut album

This coming Friday, Aparté will release the debut album of French clarinetist Arthur Stockel. He is currently Principal Clarinet for the Orchestre Philhamonique du Luxembourg, and he performs as a soloist with them for recordings of the two clarinet concertos by Carl Maria von Weber, Opus 73 in F minor and Opus 74 in E-flat major. The conductor for these performances is Leo McFall. Between these selections there is a recording of the much earlier (Opus 34) quintet, which he plays with the members of the Hanson Quartet (which also records for Aparté). These musicians are violinists Anton Hanson and Jules Dussap, Gabrielle Lafait on viola, and cellist Simon Dechambre.

By way of disclaimer, I should state that I am not a stranger to Weber’s clarinet repertoire. Back in my secondary school days, I worked on the Opus 26 Concertino; and, thanks to “friends of the family,” I was fortunate enough to perform it at a “salon,” which included several professional musicians. This was the first time I had taken on such a “serious” task; and I was more than a little relieved by the satisfaction of my audience! Nevertheless, undergraduate life at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology left little time for recreation; and I decided that my time would be better spent at the campus radio station, where I presented a program entitled Music of the Twentieth Century.

Having established my context, I can now admit all three of the Weber compositions on this new album were new to me. Nevertheless, there were no end of thematic tropes that readily reminded me of “old times!” Sadly, while Weber was prolific, many know him either for his operas or as the cousin of Constanze, who had married Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As a result, I can probably be forgiven for thinking that some of the thematic passages on this album remind me not only of Weber’s Opus 26 but also of Mozart’s K. 581 clarinet concerto! However, in spite of those “ghosts of familiarity,” I have now come away from listening to Stockel’s new album several times; and this has become one of my choices when I feel a need to raise my spirits!