This new album by the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra and Aapo Häkkinen together with the Audi Jugendchorakademie and bassoonist Jani Sunnarborg featuring late works by composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1775–1838) makes an important addition to the recordings of Nordic Classical period works and of early Finnish music. Highlight of the album is the world première recording of Crusell’s Viking-themed ‘The Last Warrior’ (Den sista kämpen), the composer’s last large-scale composition.

…Von den drei Konzerten ist das Konzert in F-Moll sicherlich das dramatischste. In musikalischer und technischer Hinsicht ist es auch das schwierigste. Das Lob in der Allgemeinen musikalischen Zeitung von 1818 war überschwänglich:
"Hr. C, erster Kammermusicus und Klarinettist des Königs von Schweden, hat sich seit einigen Jahren durch seine Compositionen für sein Instrument nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern überall, wo man dasselbe warhaft künstlerisch behandelt und zugleich gehaltvolle Instrumentalcompositionen liebt, einen ausgezeichneten Ruf erworben; und alle, die Hrn. C. selbst gehört haben, ruhmen ihn auch als einen der vorzüglichsten Virtuosen.

Thea King's excellent performances transfer well to the new medium. She plays Weber's concerto elegantly and with a nice rhythmic kick to the finale, though taking it a little more slowly than other players has its risks. The usual coupling with Weber's other clarinet concerto is here rejected in favour of a very attractive work hardly known outside the ranks of clarinettists but deserving wider currency. A very agreeable record.

These must be among the earliest of oboe quintets, either on or off record. They are also among the least familiar; but of course not at all necessarily among the least rewarding on that account. Most rewarding is the Crussel; and it is good to see such a long-neglected composer now at last coming into his own. A divertimento as such is far from unusual for wind; but this one, in a single continuous movement (with varied sections) certainly is. The sections add up to a normal balance of (roughly) quick-slow-quick, the slow particularly effective in its evocation of Mozart's favourite G minor laments by deserted sopranos (there is a difference, though: probably none of Mozart's sopranos ever played the oboe so well as this). Throughout Crusell, himself a wind-player, treates the oboe as leader, and throughout he writes the most elegant and varied of music.

‘An excellent record, beautifully played, splendidly recorded, in every way highly rewarding’ (Gramophone)