My Oh Meyer!

Here we go again! Last year, it was pianist Kathryn Stott who announced her retirement from performing in public. Fortunately, classical music listeners in central Illinois were able to catch one of her final appearances, when she was featured with cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the Krannert Center.

At the end of 2025, clarinetist Sabine Meyer will be retiring. She made the announcement last year, but I found out about it only recently. And yes, I did check her itinerary. There are no plans for her coming to town – or anywhere in the U.S.

Over the years, we’ve been enjoying her recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado. And we’ve enjoyed selections from her recordings of concertos by Johann and Carl Stamitz with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and works by Franz Danzi with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra of Heilbronn, Germany. On that recording, she’s featured with James Galway in a Sinfonia Concertante by Danzi for flute and clarinet.

We also have a recording of Sabine Meyer with the Heilbronn orchestra in music of Carl Maria von Weber, Franz Krommer, and Felix Mendelssohn. The work by Krommer is for two clarinets, and those by Mendelssohn for clarinet and basset horn. The basset horn is a member of the clarinet family with an extended lower range. On the CD, Sabine is joined by her brother, clarinetist Wolfgang Meyer. He performs on the basset horn in the Mendelssohn pieces

Not only was I late in hearing about Sabine Meyer’s retirement. I learned just this month that Wolfgang Meyer passed away several years ago. The two of them had performed with Sabine’s husband, clarinetist Reiner Wehle, as the Trio de Clarone. In Eddy Vanoosthuyse’s 2022 interview with Sabine and Reiner in The Clarinet, I was reminded that Sabine’s father played and taught the clarinet, as well as piano, saxophone, and accordion. She had violin, piano, clarinet, and organ lessons up to age 18. At that point, she decided to concentrate on the clarinet.

As you know, names or words with different spellings and meanings can sound alike on radio. That invites word play. It also invites occasional clarification and spelling words aloud. Along with recordings by Sabine and Wolfgang Meyer, I’ve presented some with oboist Albrecht Mayer, clarinetist Rita Karin Meier, and violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. Some of you might have thought they were all one happy family. That’s not a bad thing. Radio has brought families together since its early days, so why can’t it contribute to expanding them too?

A recent recording has brought pianist Claire Huangci and conductor Howard Griffiths back together. I was excited to share it with Classic Mornings listeners. It’s been years since they teamed up for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in the composer’s piano version. That recording, made in 2017, featured the Brandenburg State Orchestra of Frankfurt, Germany.

Already, it’s been a couple of years since the release of their latest recording, featuring Mozart piano concertos. This time, Claire Huangci performs with the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra led by Howard Griffiths. It’s part of a project from the Swiss Orpheum Foundation for the promotion of young soloists. Griffiths, the British conductor who’s been based in Switzerland for years, is the music director of the Foundation. He selects the soloists for concert performances, most of which are presented in Zurich at the Tonhalle. And he’s recording the complete concertos of Mozart with those players, who are being billed as the “Next Generation Mozart Soloists.”

Claire Huangci is a 34-year-old Chinese American pianist, who was born in Rochester, New York. She lives in Frankfurt these days. When I heard that she would be teamed with Griffiths, who has been her mentor for over 10 years, I had high hopes. I wasn’t disappointed. The recording features Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos.15, 16, and 17 (Alpha 928).

Coincidence brought two 150th anniversary celebrations together this month. French composer Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875, four days after the premiere of French composer Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen. We celebrated the 150th anniversaries of both Carmen and Ravel on Classic Mornings. For Ravel, I focused on his gifts as an orchestrator. He made “hits” of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Claude Debussy’s Danse.

Mussorgsky wrote Pictures at an Exhibition in 1874, the year before Ravel was born. It was in 1922, more than 40 years after Mussorgsky’s death, that conductor Serge Koussevitsky commissioned Ravel to orchestrate the work. And it turns out that he orchestrated the Debussy piece the same year, in tribute to Debussy, who died in 1918.

Classic Mornings brings me together with new and longtime listeners all across central Illinois. I hope you’re one of them. Join us Monday through Friday from 9-noon on FM 90.9 or online at will.illinois.edu.