Viena Octet

Suffice it to say that these recordings are both classics of the recorded chamber music repertory. The Schubert Octet, the second version recorded by Willi Boskovsky's original Vienna Octet, is one of the great recordings of the octet, surpassed only by the ensemble's earlier mono recording (where more repeats were observed). It is full of life, and was a truly ground-breaking release back in 1957. Decca's recording still sounds wonderful - only a hint of hardness in the violin sound betrays its age. To some listeners the Vienna sound may be an acquired taste, but for me, the Vienna Octet recordings are of great importance both musically and historically.

The Fibonacci Sequence is a versatile chamber ensemble based in the United Kingdom, and since 1994 it has been the artist in residence at Kingston University. The group consists of musicians of international stature who are well-versed in the chamber repertoire, and the personnel shifts according to the needs of a given work. In the case of Franz Schubert's Octet in F major, D. 803, the instrumentation of clarinet, bassoon, horn, and string quintet (which includes a double bass) is not a conventional grouping, yet Fibonacci is flexible enough to fill the parts with performers who sound attuned to each other, as if they had played together for years.

Chef d'oeuvre de fraîcheur et d'invention mélodique, l'Octuor de Mendelssohn, exprime le génie précoce d'un jeune homme de seize ans. Cet effectif élargi peut se combiner par la réunion de deux quatuors (les Smetana & Janacek, les Kocian & Prazak…) ou être confié à des formations ad hoc, comme le Wiener Oktett que nous entendons ici dans sa formation tardive de 1972, menée par Anton Fietz au premier archet. Les instrumentistes autrichiens privilégient la souplesse du matériau à la vigueur de l'élan, adouci par la texture fondue de leur sonorité suave.

Postcards from Vienna: drawn largely from the supreme players of the Wiener Philharmoniker, collected here are the Decca recordings of Viennese chamber music ensembles, including the New Vienna Octet, Vienna Wind Soloists, Wiener Waldhornverein and Vienna Flute Trio, many making their first international appearance on CD. Led by clarinetist Alfred Boskovsky, the first line-up of the Vienna Octet made it's last recording for Decca in 1972, but Boskovsky was behind the revival of the group's name, having already chosen the young members of the Vienna Philharmonic who would carry on the work of the ensemble and it's traditions of superbly mellifluous, silver-toned playing.

Under the baton of conductor Mark Scatterday, the Eastman Wind Ensemble celebrates its 60th anniversary with its first recording for Avie, a superb reading of Stravinsky's Octet, while the Eastman Virtuosi, with narrator Jan Opalach, deliver a devilish rendition of L'Histoire du Soldat.

The success of the Dave Pell Octet was one of the fairy-tale stories of the West Coast jazz of the Fifties. Founded by Pell in 1953, this small jazz group, drawn from the nucleus of Les Brown’s orchestra, was among the most popular jazz outfits in Southern California within months. The Octet’s first library had the stimulating and ingeniously voiced arrangements of Shorty Rogers and Wes Hensel, which gave this group the feel of a big band. “We used the guitar as a voice in unison with trumpet,” Pell explained, “and so the Octet sound had a successful formula which allowed us to play a tempo that was danceable and yet still had a jazz feel.”

Since the repertoire for cello octet is small and consists almost entirely of arrangements and new works, expect Four Winds, Conjunto Ibérico's 2002 release, to be somewhat eccentric and experimental. Leader Elias Arizcuren and his virtuoso cellists seek a happy medium between the intimacy and clarity of a much smaller chamber group, and the richness and power of a full string orchestra; but such a balance is hard to sustain, and their shifting back and forth feels unsteady. In Terry Riley's Requiem for Adam, the ensemble is pulled between extremes of symphonic density and chamber transparency, and this heavy arrangement seems only to distort the dynamics and textures of the original version for string quartet.

The last of his orchestral compositions and one of his most enduringly popular pieces, Mendelssohn's violin concerto is as much a crowd-pleaser now as it was when premiered by Ferdinand David and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1845. Its unassuming focus on melody and dynamic interaction between soloist and orchestra – rather than merely on technical feats and virtuosic showmanship – ensures its place at the heart of the violin concerto repertoire.

This CD is a real anomaly: a recording of Latin American music for voice and eight cellos that does NOT include Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5! The repertoire presented here is so rich that the Villa-Lobos isn't even missed (and for fans who crave hearing Conjunto Ibérico perform it, the group has recorded it for Channel Classics). All of the pieces are expertly arranged for cello octet by Conjunto Ibérico's conductor Elias Arizcuren and Pablo Escande.