Melos Ensemble

This well re-mastered disc is a generous compilation of two former LPs. The Hummel, recorded in 1965, was originally one LP and the Weber, recorded in 1959, was the other. The two Hummel works were written in 1812 (Quintet) and 1816 (Septet) and the Weber quintet was completed in 1815 having been started some four years earlier in 1811. Hummel and Weber both belong to the generation of composers who started in service and, during their lives, made the transition to becoming independent freelance musicians. Hummel was much admired as a virtuoso pianist and most of his works feature the piano in some form or another.

The Melos Ensemble was formed by musicians who wanted to play chamber music scored for a larger ensemble in a combination of strings, winds and other instruments with the quality of musical rapport only regular groups can achieve. All its members were excellent musicians who held positions in notable orchestras and appeared as soloists. The clarinetist Gervase de Peyer, flautist Richard Adeney, viola player Cecil Aronowitz and cellist Terence Weil were the founding members.

Anton Bruckner - Streichquintett F-dur/ String Quintet F major
Melos Quartett / Enrique Santiago
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 246 MB | Full Artwork: 53 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Harmonia Mundi # HMA 1951421 | Country/Year: France 2003, 1993
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

The Melos Quartet is one of the leading and longest-established string quartets of the world, and is particularly known for a warm, romantic sound without overstatement of emotionality, a strong grasp of form, and highly accurate, assured playing. Its founders were four string players who already had important careers as soloists and orchestral musicians.

It may seem an unlikely thing to say about a German chamber ensemble, yet the Melos Quartet of Stuttgart are more suave, more feline, than the Quartetto Italiano in the opening movement of Mozart's E flat Quartet. The former have, too, the advantage of a modern recording with a more exact stereo placing of each instrument, whereas the Philips disc is close on ten years old.

Nielsen composed most of his wind chamber music towards the latter part of his career, when his interests moved from strings to wind instruments. The disc includes the most familiar and widely recorded specimen of Nielsen’s chamber writing, the 1922 Wind Quintet, coupled with lesser known works such as Serenata in Vano, Two Fantasies Op.2 and Canto Serioso. “Both major and minor works are wonderfully played… One can urge immediate acquisition of this disc,” wrote Fanfare. Although, now longer performing publicly, the Athena Ensemble had an excellent career and reputation, “The music is expertly performed with charm, sensitivity and imagination by the Athena Ensemble” said Classic CD (on the Elgar Wind Quintet recording, CHAN 241-33) and this disc is sure to remind listeners of their back catalogue with Chandos.

The Italian baroque seems to be an inexhaustible quarry for lovers of historical performance practice and beautifully balanced music. Francesco Antonio Bonporti was a composer-priest who, after studies in Innsbruck and Rome, spent most of his working life in his home town of Trento, once host to the Tridentinum, but in the early eighteenth century nothing more than a provincial nest.

Albert Roussel (1869-1937) a vingt-cinq ans, en 1894, lorsqu’il renonce à une carrière toute tracée d’officier de marine (il a navigué jusqu’en Cochinchine et aux Indes) pour entamer de sérieuses études musicales : il s’installe à Paris, prend des leçons auprès d’Eugène Gigout, puis devient l’élève de Vincent d’Indy à la Schola Cantorum. La maîtrise du contrepoint qu’il y acquiert (puis enseigne) n’assèche en rien une inspiration aussi personnelle que colorée. Joyau de son oeuvre pour orchestre, la Suite en fa (1926) est emblématique d’une écriture vigoureuse : Paul Paray élance les lignes anguleuses du Prélude comme personne (et quels cuivres !), rend à la Gigue ses sonorités de kermesse, équilibre souplesse et ferveur dans la Sarabande.