Having recorded prolifically for BIS as both clarinettist and conductor, Michael Collins here comes at last to one of the great masterpieces of the clarinet chamber repertoire, Brahms's Clarinet Quintet, partnered by the acclaimed Escher Quartet. Written at the twilight of Brahms's career, it is an elegiac masterpiece – radiant with aching nostalgia and a sense of lost love before settling into a melancholy serenity, direct in feeling yet always subtle. It is paired with the Clarinet Quintet of Max Reger, who modelled his work on those of Mozart and Brahms and, in this final composition completed before his untimely death, pushes tonal limits without loosening his grip on structure. Together the two works trace the late-Romantic afterglow of a form that Mozart's own glorious quintet had long overshadowed.