Summery Chamber Music

An interesting recital of mainly 20th century chamber music from the Galliard Ensemble om a BBC Music mag cover disk entitled Wind Quintets. The featured works are Nielsen's Wind Quintet, Six Bagatelles by Ligeti, Summer Music by Barber and Jean Francaix's Wind Quintet No 1. The quintet comprises flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon and the mood is generally upbeat. The Nielsen was tailored for the Copenhagen Wind Quintet and shows fine interplay. Ligeti's bagatelles are early works written when he was still in Hungary and maybe subject to the constraints of a communist regime. They are folk inflected Bartokian works. The title of Barber's piece describes accurately the summery feel ( rich, warm but also playful ) which is also reflected by Francaix, who once said "my desire is to communicate joy rather than sorrow". Maybe not the most profound mood bu one that there is certainly a place for. The playing of the Galliard Ensemble is excellent throughout and while the wind quintet may not be the most widely represented in the repertoire, a solid case is made out for it here.