The pieces in this programme represent highly contrasting examples of what might be termed the Central European tradition of wind music. Between 1781 and 1784 Mozart wrote three great works for wind ensemble, culminating in the ‘Gran Partita’ Serenade in B flat, K361 for thirteen wind instruments. The performance of K388 on this disc uses an arrangement for wind quintet by Mordechai Rechtman (b1926). Rechtman is a celebrated bassoonist who was born in Germany but who left his native land in 1933 and settled in Israel.

There is a gentle irony to the fact that a seventy year-old composer could write a work entitled ‘Youth’. However, though Leoš Janácek may have been old in physical terms when he composed Mládí in 1924, one only has to listen to a few bars of this inventive and invigorating score to appreciate that mentally he was anything but elderly. The work comes from the astonishingly productive last few years of Janáèek’s life, a period that saw the composition of a succession of masterpieces, including Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass and his last two operas, The Makropulos Affair and From the House of the Dead.

The Austrian composer, Werner Pirchner (1940-2001) was born in Hall in the Austrian Tyrol. Jazz played a significant part in his career, both as a performer and composer. He played the vibraphone and marimba and was self-taught on both instruments, and also as a composer. His Streichquartett für Bläserquintett has its origin in music that Pirchner composed in 1975 for a film about the Tyrol, which took the form of a series of variations on a Tyrolean slave song. A few years later he arranged the music for wind quintet and at the same time he added three further movements, one of which was written in memory of Heinrich Heine.

quintett.wien:
Hansgeorg Schmeiser, flute
Harald Hörth, oboe
Gerald Pachinger, clarinet
Martin Bramböck, horn
Maximilian Feyertag, bassoon

with Reinhold Brunner, bass clarinet