On this Hybrid SACD of music for clarinet and piano, the piano parts have been arranged for strings by Geert van Keulen. The well-known pieces given this unusual treatment are Brahms’ Sonatas, opus 120 Nos. 1 and 2, and Schumann’s Fantasistucke, opus 73. The performers are the soloist Arno Piters and members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam. Born in 1980, Arno Piters studied clarinet with Jan Cober and Willem van der Vuurst at the Maastricht Conservatory, where he earned an honours diploma. He then went on to study with George Pieterson at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and was again awarded an honours diploma. Piters has been a member of the National Youth Orchestra of the Netherlands, the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and the European Union Youth Orchestra, where he performed under such conductors as Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink and Vladimir Ashkenazy. He has made solo appearances with the Residentie Orchestra and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, among others.