Although
Luigi Boccherini
's music was played on occasion even before the general rediscovery of Classical-era instrumental music beyond
Mozart
and
Haydn
, there is still a great deal of it that has barely been touched. The flute chamber works here aren't world premieres, but they are hardly commonly heard, and they are delightful. A
set of flute quintets, Op. 19
, takes up the entire first CD of this double album. They seem simple, with just two movements each except for the last one, but the movement pairs are different in each case, and so is the variety of treatments vis-à-vis the relationship between the flute and the string ensemble. Sometimes, it is woven fully into the texture; sometimes, it is a concerto-like soloist; and sometimes, it lies somewhere in between. The writing in several of these works is symphonic in texture. Sample the programmatic
Flute Quintet in D major, Op. 19, No. 6 ("Las Parejas")
. Las parejas means "the couples," but the couples here are pairs of horses in a race as their riders hold hands. The authorship of the
Flute Quintet in C major, G. 443
, on the second disc is disputed, and honestly, it doesn't sound much like
Boccherini
. However, everything on the album is played with the proper relaxed grace by flutist
Sally Walker
and a shifting group of accompanimental players. This music has the same elegantly entertaining quality that it had when it first appeared (mostly in the early 1750s) more than two and a half centuries ago. ~ James Manheim