The Clarinet Concerto by the Danish composer Carl Nielsen is one of the absolute pillars of the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra, which is why every clarinetist must have played it at least once in his musical life. The Austrian clarinetist Daniel Ottensamer, however, has very special memories of this work, because in 2009 he also won the important "Carl Nielsen International Clarinet Competition" in Denmark with this concerto. ottensamer was 23 years young at the time - and had long since held one of the most prestigious positions: in 2006, at the age of only 20, he was appointed principal clarinetist of the Vienna Philharmonic. And it was with this "his" orchestra that he performed Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto under the baton of Ádám Fischer in Vienna's Musikvereinssaal in 2014. With the live recording of the concerto, Ottensamer now also opens his current album on Sony Classical, which is dedicated to the music of the far north. In addition to Nielsen's concerto, he can also be heard performing his Fantasy for Clarinet and Piano. The clarinetist will be accompanied by his longtime piano partner Christoph Traxler. With him, Ottensamer has also arranged "Lyric Pieces" by Edvard Grieg for clarinet and piano for the album. "The Nordic music of Edvard Grieg and Carl Nielsen, as well as the Scandinavian folk music that served each of these composers as the basis for their masterpieces, has fascinated me since my earliest youth," Daniel Ottensamer says. "By juxtaposing the complex clarinet concerto by Carl Nielsen with the "Lyric Pieces" by Edvard Grieg, which are deeply moving due to their simplicity and plainness, I would like to shed light on the various facets of Nordic music as well as the different timbres of the clarinet associated with it." Dane Carl Nielsen wrote his Clarinet Concerto in 1928, three years before his death. Nielsen focused on chamber orchestration, with prominent bassoon and horn passages. The snare drum is the most important instrument along with the solo clarinet, fueling the battle of keys with wild rhythmic outbursts. The technical demands on the clarinetist turn out to be enormously high. The Fantasy for clarinet and piano, on the other hand, is an early work by Nielsen. Nielsen was only between 16 and 18 years old when he demonstrated his early compositional talent with this brilliant fantasy. Of Grieg's total of 66 piano pieces, which have become famous under the title "Lyric Pieces", Ottensamer and Christoph Traxler have arranged twelve pieces. And Daniel Ottensamer with his clarinet roams through these sometimes folkloric, sometimes melancholy worlds of sound in a dreamlike and heartfelt way.