Notice that in any review of a recording of Mozart's clarinet works, the musicians are always criticized and critiqued, but there is no critic that even attempts to lay a finger on the compositions themselves, except when praising them. That is because, simply put, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and Quintet are perfect. The Concerto, Mozart's most mature finished work (it was the last major composition that he completed before his death; the Requiem Mass was, of course, never finished), is absolutely sublime in its beautiful, lyrical phrasing and its use of the clarinet's full range. Every theme is fleshed out and expanded upon to its fullest, with a gorgeous, transcendent effect. The Quintet, composed several years earlier, sounds very similar to the concerto in many respects. The great Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein writes, "one almost has the impression that Mozart felt impelled to express again [in the concerto], in greater and dramatically animated form, what he had already expressed in more lyric form... in the Quintet." And lyric the quintet is; the strings and the clarinet play off of each other perfectly throughout, creating a harmonious blend of beautiful sound. Unlike other later clarinet works, such as those by C.M. Weber (I also highly recommend Shifrin's rendition of these), which dazzle with their huge dramatic sound and prolonged technical passages, these Mozart pieces are beautiful because of their simple and heartwarming nature.