Strauss: Le bourgeois gentilhomme Suite; Duett-Concertino for clarinet & bassoon; String Sextet from Capriccio

COMPOSERS: Strauss
LABELS: PentaTone
WORKS: Le bourgeois gentilhomme Suite; Duett-Concertino for clarinet & bassoon; String Sextet from Capriccio
PERFORMER: Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Bremen/Paavo Järvi
CATALOGUE NO: PTC 5186 060

Sheer charm ought to be the keynote of these three Strauss chamber pieces. Unfortunately Paavo Järvi tends to hold the reins of this polished ensemble a little too tightly for that charm always to come across. Instead, his immaculate account, recorded with handsome presence, highlights the elaborate craftsmanship and inventive counterpoint at work in the Bourgeois gentilhomme Suite (drawn from the incidental music intended to frame Ariadne auf Naxos, the opera which began life as another part of Strauss’s ‘little Molière project’). The performance works least well when Strauss’s very individual wit and warmth need to come to the fore: it’s a long way from classic Kempe (EMI) or the masterly Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (DG). It comes across best when the composer takes a back seat to Lully in two of the three later numbers; you can visualise the smoking candles as the muted strings solemnly process for the ‘Entry of Cleonte’. The bassoon support excels in the central section here; so, later, does the clarinet, piping its cheeky birdsong in the most succulent dish served at the bourgeois’ supper. Intriguingly, although one of the players is different, the same instruments are happily spotlit in the Duett-Concertino, highlighting its hidden programme of Beauty and the Beast with their soulful vocalising. The Sextet from Capriccio is full of character, too, sensitively balanced in this arrangement between its original soloists and full strings. David Nice