STANFORD CLARINET CONCERTO

'A fine work, in one continuous movement.., it makes masterly use of the instrument's wide register and variety of timbres. Plane's interpretation of the composer's long lyrical lines (in particular the central Andante), the climactic peaks, dramatic interjections and tender pianissimi are nothing short of exceptional in their careful grading; clearly, as his recording of Stanford's chamber works for clarinet demonstrates, he has a special affinity for this music.'
Gramophone, December 2008

'Robert Plane is an excellent soloist, emulating the incisiveness of his late teacher Thea King on Helios, and the delicacy of Emma Johnson on ASV, while adding his own touches of fantasy....altogether, a valuable contribution to the continuing Stanford revival.'
BBC Music Magazine December 2008

'..stimulating, led by the mellifluous playing of soloist Robert Plane'
Daily Telegraph, October 2008

'..this present version is essential for all Stanford enthusiasts. I am especially impressed by the contrast that Robert Plane creates between and within movements. For my money, it is a moving and sometimes revelatory performance.'
Music-Web International, November 2008

' ..and the coupling is high-quality, the Stanford Clarinet Concerto, in a dramatically convincing account from Robert Plane who, in a nice gesture, dedicates this performance to the memory of Thea King, whose tone he sometimes recalls with his own.'
BBC Radio 3, CD Review

'To judge by the excellence of both performances, it's also music that's good to play, with Plane relishing the Concerto's virtuoso solo part'
Classic FM Magazine, February 2009

"Gramophone Recommends"

'This disc is a most welcome addition to the catalogue of recordings of John Ireland's chamber music (a rather neglected but superb corpus of deeply felt works) in that its principal focus is the range of pieces that the composer wrote for clarinet, played here with ravishing lyricism and conviction by Robert Plane, who has surely now fully occupied the shoes of the late Thea King in his championship of British clarinet music. Plane's kinship with this music is clear from the more Brahmsian hues of the Sextet (1898), the limpid lyricism of The Holy Boy arrangement (1913), to the extrovert passion of the Fantasy Sonata for Clarinet (1943) where he is arguably at his most impressive.

Though the Sextet, a student work, betrays a deference to Brahms (not surprising since Stanford, his teacher prescribed the model for all his students), there is a freshness and fluency about the material as well as a flair for the idiom, which compares favourably with those prodigious chamber works of Hurlstone, Coleridge-Taylor (both RCM fellow students) and, later, Frank Bridge. An attractive novelty on this CD is the Clarinet Trio which Ireland completed in 1913 but withdrew after two performances. Left incomplete and in manuscript at Ireland's death, it has been reconstructed skilfully by Stephen fox (using analogies with a later version for piano trio and a further reworking of the material for his Piano Trio No 3 of 1938). Plane, Alice Neary and Sophia Rahman give a sensitive reading of a style that is much more distinctly "Irelandesque" in its assimilation of French sonorities and sound-moments, Plane's hushed playing being especially enthralling.'
Gramophone June 2009

'The Fantasy Sonata is one of his most impressive and personal works and a worthy successor to the two Brahms Clarinet Sonatas. Robert Plane and Sophia Rahman give it a livlier, less innately nostalgic performance than some of their distinguished rivals, discovering melancholic defiance beneath its lyrical and playful exterior...A valuable, intriguing disc.'
BBC Music Magazine May 2009

'John Ireland composed the Sextet for clarinet, French horn and string quartet in 1898, but felt insecure in his student days that hid it away. It was sixty-two years later before this magnificent and passionate score was to come to light. With the equally unknown and vibrant Clarinet Trio, they form part of one of the most engaging discs of British chamber music I have heard. Robert Plane and David Pyatt are the superb clarinet and horn, and together with the fabulous Maggini Quartet guarantee high quality performances.'
Yorkshire Post

'This is another winning entry in Naxos’s ongoing commitment to the music of John Ireland. Performances are ideal and recording, as always with this label, excellent. Strongly recommended.'
Fanfare, July 2009

'Robert Plane, along with several prominent colleagues in the British music scene, presents this program. Ireland’s admiration of Brahms and Debussy is evident; his music is more sincere than showy, more expressive than hurried. Plane and his collaborators respect these boundaries, yet still make an excellent case for his works, knowing when to hold back and when to indulge the composer’s irresistible romanticism. Plane is more disciplined than most British clarinetists when it comes to sound and articulation—he is a very good chamber musician, and his soft playing is deliciously exquisite.'
American Record Guide July 2009

‘.. a fine quartet.., the Gould Trio and Robert Plane are among the best modern accounts.’
BBC Music Magazine August 2008

‘The Gould Trio focuses on the music’s fantastical side, so much so that the piece has rarely seemed more mercurial and cogent.’
Philadelphia Inquirer, USA

‘The premiere of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time may have been wildly over-mythologised, but it's still an amazing story. Its performance here is exemplary.’
Album of the Week, The Independent

Editor’s Choice, Gramophone November 2007
Classic FM Disc of the Week

'There is much to admire in these four chamber works for clarinet, described by the composer as being written in a 'Brahmsian' idiom. British clarinettist Robert Plane plays their mellifluous themes with grace and affection.'
Classic FM magazine 2007

'Spooky, no sooner had I dug out Thea King's affectionate 1980 Hyperion recording of the Stanford Sonata following the sad announcement of her death in June than Robert Plane's new version dropped on the doormat. The work is one of Stanford's strongest achievements from his later years, boasting at its heart a powerful Adagio (''caoine – an Irish lament) which finds Plane even more responsive to the music's raw emotion and beaming fantasy than either King or Emma Johnson. Ravishing in tone and exploiting an excitingly wide dynamic range, Plane forges a commandingly articulate alliance with pianist Benjamin Frith. Indeed, it's hard to imagine more sympathetic music-making – a statement which holds true for the Three Intermezzi (an exceedingly attractive trilogy dating from 1879) and the two substantial, utterly, disarming Fantasies for clarinet and string quartet…Naxos's absurdly modest asking-price is the icing on the cake!'
Gramophone November 2007

'Robert Plane is superb …Dashing performances for minimal wallet-damage – why are you waiting.' Editor's Choice, Gramophone November 2007

'Plane's clarinet has an eloquent and expressive voice. He can be clownish, rude, barracking and sneering; he can weep, simper and smarm; he can joke, cackle and cheer. He can also produce whispered tone from nothing, bite the air with a chisel edge, roar low down like a didgeridoo or soar with the pure white sound of a cathedral treble. He can do all this among chords recognisable from Stanford's church music.'
The Times August 2007

Recommended Recording - Building a Library, CD Review, BBC Radio 3
Winner, Classic CD Best Concerto Recording 2000
Gramophone, Editor's Choice'

'But it is one of the merits of this exceptional performance that Robert Plane’s mellifluous playing is so perfectly suited to the clarinet’s role as peacemaker, while the Northern Sinfonia strings add the necessary edge when it is required.'
Anthony Burton - 1001 Classical Recordings you must hear before you die

'..but the performance of the Finzi Clarinet Concerto which, for me, gets right to the heart is the excellent Robert Plane's....sinuous and flexible.'
Building a Library, BBC Radio 3

'His virtuoso command and clear fresh tone are most impressive, with clean, crisp definition…The slow movement brings a glorious performance, rapt and expansive, with hushed playing lovingly expressive. An outstanding bargain version.'
Gramophone 2001

This is an absolutely delightful programme which will be especially welcome to all lovers of English music. The playing throughout is first-class, with Robert Plane proving an excellent soloist able to exploit both the elegiac and virtuosic aspects of the music with equal success.'
BBC Music Magazine ***** 1998

Final Shortlist Gramophone Awards (Chamber Music) 2006

'The performances are excellent, and Robert Plane is responsive to the shifting moods of the mature sonata...a programme to intrigue all Bax enthusiasts'
BBC Music Magazine

'Robert Plane's irreproachably alert and stylish account with Benjamin Frith leaves a delightlful impression. Plane's timbre could hardly be more alluring and he strikes up a tangible rapport with Frith. Enthusiasts can rest assured that these admirably agile and idiomatic performers give Bax's youthful inspiration every chance to shine; indeed, it's impossible to imagine a more convincing account of the Trio'
Gramophone

"Gramophone Recommends"

'Superb technique and tight-reigned clarity…performances and recording both excel.'
BBC Music Magazine

'This collection of six works reveals Alwyn at his most impressive, always thoughtful in finely crafted works, the Clarinet Sonata with Robert Plane an inspired soloist'
Gramophone (Gramophone Recommends)

'Dip into this disc of William Alwyn at any point and discover readily attractive music. Wedded to a melodic idiom, the sprightly Clarinet Sonata offers a happy opening, while the bubbling finale of the Oboe Sonata has naughty French inclinations. The creamy Viola Sonatina; a String Trio with some modernisms, and Conversations for violin, clarinet and piano, is surely one of the most intensely beautiful 20th-century scores. Soloists include the clarinet of Robert Plane, and pianist Sophia Rahman. A fabulous release.'
Yorkshire Post

'Alwyn’s chamber music bristles with piquant ideas. Every phrase has a spark, challenging its interpreters musically and technically while giving the listener a feast of gently angular lyricism. The Clarinet Sonata (Robert Plane, Sophia Rahman) is a virtuosic fantasy-piece bursting with dramatic contrast.'
Financial Times

'With such a starry line-up of players the high quality of these performances will surely come as no surprise. The Conversations of the 1950s for clarinet, violin and piano is a particular favourite, especially as Robert Plane, Lucy Gould and Sophia Rahman play with such rapt sensitivity and tonal allure. A generous and valuable collection of Alwyn's chamber music.'
Classic FM magazine

'This is an extremely important addition to the corpus of Cyril Scott’s recorded music. For one thing, four out of the five works are premiere recordings. Secondly, the playing by the Gould Piano Trio and the clarinet soloist Robert Plane is both convincing and sympathetic. Scott’s music covers a wide range of styles and musical language – and each works needs a different approach. This awareness of the composer’s ‘periods’ has been well attended to.'
Musicweb International

'Chandos continues to fly the flag for neglected 20th-century British music with this excellently played selection of Cyril Scott's chamber music. All the major works here, except the first piano trio, were composed after the second world war, and all but the clarinet quintet are recorded here for the first time. Taken individually, the pieces are impressive – fluent, and well structured, with the Debussyan influences of especially the first piano trio well integrated into what is fundamentally a late romantic idiom.'
Guardian

'Both in this piece and in the Clarinet Quintet that follows, Robert Plane is an eloquent and impassioned clarinettist. The playing is full-blooded and committed and, as you listen to the music, you begin to realise that Scott had a distinctive and individual voice and that he was a composer of real imagination and merit.'
International Record Review 

'Between them Chandos and Dutton have totally transformed the Cyril Scott discography in the past few years, so that we begin to know this elusive and prolific composer much better; but there are still treasures to find. Chandos continues the process with a valuable disc of chamber music. Only the amiable 1951 Clarinet Quintet has been recorded before, but it's the 1955 Clarinet Trio that seems the most striking and characterful work here. The excellent Gould Trio are the stalwarts of this enjoyable disc.'
BBC Music Magazine
Performance ***** Sound ****

This Naxos program presents four substantial works requiring from one to five musicians. Perhaps the most enduring quality of his music is the amazingly wide variety of styles Roger uses. First off is the Clarinet Quintet …there are many passages of that hyper-romantic yearning and intense lyricism that characterize late Mahler and early Schoenberg. All four works are rendered with an obvious sense of commitment and receive the highest standards of performance. A clear, clean, unfussy acoustic environment adds a further feather in the cap for Kurt Roger.'
Fanfare

'Sheffield-born pianist Benjamin Frith breathes new life into Kurt Roger's attractive Piano Sonata, a composer who has slipped from the repertoire. Born in Vienna in 1895, but wedded to the melodic music of a previous era, he moved to the States in 1939 where he was a very much in demand. Frith joins his colleagues in the Gould Piano Trio for the short and highly contrasted Piano Trio, the disc also containing the Clarinet Quintet, infused with nostalgia, and the Variations on an Irish Air. A Well-filled and admirably recorded release.'
Yorkshire Post

'His musical style is a curious combination of traditional and forward-looking; the opening movement of the Clarinet Quintet is a moderately-paced Allegro, which is stylistically reminiscent of a combination of Tchaikovsky and Mahler. The central movement is deeply romantic in essence and brings to mind early Schoenberg. The music is lyrical, expressive and slightly nostalgic. This work was written shortly before the composer’s death in 1966 and shows a maturity of style, with its elements fully integrated to create a convincing whole. The final movement has a distinctive flair, with fugal entries and dense polyphony. The playing is excellent throughout, with Robert Plane’s silky clarinet sound providing a wonderful additional timbre to the polished strings.'
Musicweb International

'The Piano Sonata comes from his New York period in 1943, the central movement having traces of Debussy, the piquant harmonies the only sign of its mid 20th century origin. It is here played with the infinite care for detail that has been the hallmark of Benjamin Frith’s previous Naxos discs, the pianist then joining his Gould colleagues for the Piano Trio, it’s three short movements echoing the great Viennese masters of past times.Written in the year before his death, the Clarinet Quintet was to be his last work and contains a feel of nostalgia in the slow movement before a sense of superimposed happiness appears in an animated finale...He could certainly not have wished for more compelling performances, and you will find Roger a much undervalued composer and a worthy discovery.'
David Denton, David's Review Corner, Naxos.com

' ....the result is gorgeous, as here in the serene conclusion to the slow movement of the Clarinet Trio...exuding poise and elegance.'
CD Review BBC Radio 3

'....splendid performances.This richly rewarding release completes the Gould's admirable cycle on a high note. Full of lyrical outpouring, warm and varied tone, and perfect judgement of tempi, all these performances display an all too rare ability to combine in equal measure instrumental cohesion and expressive individuality. These are conversations, never debates...heart-warming and mind-nourishing celebrations of community-vividly characterised, very shrewdly built, while never sacrificing small-scale detail to large-scale structure, and grippingly communicative.'
Piano Magazine

'..an irresistible performance of the Strauss Duett-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon, teasing and graceful in its phrasing, taut of rhythm, and the recorded sound well-balanced and distributed.'
BBC Music Magazine 1995

'The Clarinet Sonata, Howells's last major chamber work was completed in 1946. The dedicatee was Frederick Thurston, and the wonderfully idiomatic 1980 recording by his wife and pupil Thea King has certainly stood the test of time. Robert Plane's poetic account is possibly finer still, with its entrancing poise and liquid tone. Plane shines too in the coquettish miniature A Near-Minuet and sublime Rhapsodic Quintet.'
Gramophone 2004

'With his bright, singing tone and rock-solid technique, clarinettist Robert Plane creates a formidable impression in the Weber Quintet; his is playing of great wit, virtuosity and imaginative flair. An account to savour.'
Hi-Fi News and Record Review 2000

"The loneliness one dare not sound": Emily Dickinson's frightened image could well serve as the motto for James MacMillan's Tuireadh (Gaelic for lament) where Robert Plane's gull-like clarinet swoops or hovers around the anguished Emperor String Quartet in remembrance of the ill-fated North Sea oil-rig Piper Alpha. Some have spoken of the work's "keening", its sighing and sobbing. But the overriding impression for me is of solitary witness: the scrub of bows on gut like wave-slapped wreckage, or a winged clarinet fighting off jagged string chords. Every now and again MacMillan cues an ethereal chorale. A moment of respite or the crooked finger of a summoning god?..... a remarkable programme that's beautifully played and superbly recorded.'
The Independent

'I can report that performances throughout are as superlatively disciplined as they are tirelessly eloquent; sound, balance and presentation are all beyond reproach. Another MacMillan/BIS triumph.'
Gramophone Aug 2002

'Lovely, richly communicative performances one and all (soloist Robert Plane creates a dashingly eloquent impression in the Clarinet Quintet), and ideal late-night listening.'
Andrew Aschenbach amazon.co.uk'...skilful, idiomatic performances..Altogether a must for chocaholics.'
Gramophone

'Mobius..deliver the goods with energy, grace and lyrical feeling'
BBC Music Magazine *****

'ASV's medium-priced Quicksilva series includes a number of brand new recordings of chamber music, giving an invaluable outlet for the young British chamber musicians the company tends to enlist. This is one of the finest…It opens with Marchenerzahlungen, op.132. Such is the richness of the viola tone at the lower end of the register at the lower end of the register at the opening of this work that for a moment I thought Philip Dukes was playing a cello. Robert Plane's clarinet playing is equally ripe, a natural, expressive, liquid sound, and with Sophia Rahman's responsive piano playing completing the alchemy, the trio give deeply felt readings of this intimate work.'
Sunday Times 1998

'..ithe Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale for viola and clarinet, with Robert Plane on fine form.'
The Strad, May 2007

'Clarinettist Robert Plane deftly partners Dukes in the Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale.'
International Record Review, February 2007