Search - Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck :: The Best Of The New York Woodwind Quintet, Volume 1

Great Artists brisk through a difficult repertoire

Wildfire | UK | 09/26/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"These are superb artists playing on fine instruments and achieving fine balance and blend; and the sound is too good to be true. Some of these recordings come from the early 1960s but Boston Skyline have brought out the very best and it would be difficult to fault them even today. The disc contains a variety of music ranging from the 17th Century to the present day, the latter represented above all by two eminent American composers, namely Samuel Barber and Elliot Carter. I'm afraid I've always held Elliot Carter in deep suspicion, purely a personal view since Carter, like so many of the avant garde, does not construct the musical linguistics as he goes along; thus the listener has no common musical linguistic base on which to comprehend the music inwardly. At best, to me, the music comes over as 'interesting'. In this work, at least he shows he can write something of a fugue in the fantasia. However, he commands a following and I'm bound to agree that the New York Woodwind Quintet make his music listenable. Barber's Summer Music is a different matter entirely. The work is as approachable as any Barber and is pure summer. It begins with a lazy, laid-back (and horribly difficult intro for the bassoon which is exposed in the most upper reaches of its register); soon to dissolve into dance-like themes in rapid staccato, so light and airy they could be nothing other than summer. Then more drifting under rolling clouds set in a perfect blue sky. A beautiful work in which Barber shows he is as much at ease composing for a woodwind quintet as any other medium. I was snared by the sensitivity of these artists, more so because their expressiveness comes across in these historic recordings without being forced. I've heard other, mechanically accurate recordings of the Neilsen and Barber but nothing that approaches the expressive qualities of this ensemble. They deserve never to be forgotten."