Andreas Ottensamer’s New Album Romanza – Capturing the Beauty and Precision of Chamber Music
Ottensamer pairs up with his long-term chamber partner José Gallardo
in a programme of romantic, songful works for clarinet and piano
Romanza will be released as a digital album on 30 May 2025 –
listen to Improvisation, from Templeton’s Pocket Size Sonata No. 1 here
“For me,” says Andreas Ottensamer, “chamber music is the ‘purest form’ of making music, requiring virtuosity, expressiveness and the utmost sensitivity in the musicians’ interplay. Every note counts.” The Austrian clarinettist-conductor’s love of the chamber genre and his in-depth understanding of its complex demands lie at the heart of Romanza, his latest album for Deutsche Grammophon. Ottensamer recorded Romanza with Argentinean pianist José Gallardo, his long-standing chamber partner and co‑artistic director of the Bürgenstock Festival.
Together the duo perform works by Brahms, Debussy, Gershwin, Poulenc, Rachmaninoff, Rota and more. Some were written expressly for clarinet and piano, others are transcriptions, several of them realised by Ottensamer himself. Having stepped down in January as principal clarinet of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Ottensamer is now focusing on his work as a conductor, but also plans to continue performing as soloist and chamber musician.
Romanza will be released as a digital album on 30 May 2025. A first track, the opening movement of Templeton’s Pocket Size Sonata No. 1 is already available to stream or download. The second-movement Andante un poco adagio of Brahms’s Clarinet Sonata in F minor, Op. 120 No. 1 is released on 2 May, and Ottensamer’s take on Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 follows on 16 May.
“Romanza features a selection of works I particularly treasure for their quiet, slow moments,” explains the artist. “It’s so important to create an emotional, intellectual, almost transcendental depth in these pieces, and it feels very special to have brought my favourite slow movements together here.”
His choices include individual movements from the first of Brahms’s masterful late pair of sonatas, Op. 120; the sonatas by Poulenc and Saint-Saëns, they too late works; Rota’s Brahmsian Sonata; and Templeton’s jazz-influenced Pocket Size Sonata, as well as all three of Schumann’s Romances, Op. 94.
The clarinet’s songful tone, ever-present on Romanza, is especially appropriate in its two arrangements of vocal works. The first of these is Rachmaninoff’s wordlessly expressive Vocalise; the second is “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” from Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, which brings the album to an introspective close.
Ottensamer and Gallardo also perform the former’s own transcriptions of Satie’s timeless Gymnopédie No. 1, which opens Romanza; Gershwin’s Piano Prelude No. 2 (“a sort of blues lullaby”, according to the composer); Debussy’s meditative Rêverie and La fille aux cheveux de lin; and the Adagio from Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata. All are perfect reflections of Ottensamer’s belief that an arrangement should “bring a new colour, a new creative possibility to the work”.
“I’m so happy to have been able to make this recital album with my chamber music partner, the fantastic pianist José Gallardo,” concludes Andreas Ottensamer. “Romanza is a manifestation of our friendship. And it’s also a declaration of love for the instrument through which I got to know the world of classical music: the clarinet.”
Andreas Ottensamer – key tour dates, spring-summer 2025 (full details here)
20 May – Musikverein für Steiermark, Graz (conducting) · 23 May – Concertgebouw, Amsterdam (with José Gallardo)
5 Jun – Residenz, Würzburg (conducting) · 6/7 Jun – Bürgenstock Festival (with Gallardo & friends)
24–29 Jun – Risør Chamber Music Festival · 12 Jul – Kobe International Music Festival (conducting)
18/19 Jul – Hitachi Sytems Hall, Sendai (conducting) · 26/27 Jul – Budapest Festival (conducting)
28 Jul – Klosters Music (chamber music) · 30 Jul – Menuhin Festival, Gstaad (chamber music)
