ANTON REICHA: Woodwind Quintets, Volume 3 – Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 88, No. 5; Quintet in F Major, Op. 88, No. 6 – Westwood Wind Quintet – Crystal Records CD 263, 65:32 **:
“Sextuor à vent” = MILHAUD: Scaramouche; BERNHARD HEIDEN: Intrada; HINDEMITH: Concert Piece; PIERRE MAX DUBOIS: Sinfonia da Camera; IBERT: Trois Pièces Brèves, first movement; BACH: Fugue in C Minor BWV 847 from “The Well Tempered Clavier”; ROSSINI: QUARTET No. 1 in F, first movement (arranged by David Atkins); PAUL DE WAILLY: Aubade; ADRIEN BARTHE: Passacaille; MALCOLM ARNOLD: Divertimento, first movement; RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Flight of the Bumble-Bee (arranged by David Atkins); LEO SOWERBY: Pop Goes the Weasel – Harvey Pittel, alto saxophone / Westwood Wind Quintet – Crystal Records CD 353, 62:31 ***1/2:
Volume 3 is the latest installment in the Westwood Quintet’s traversal of the twenty-four wind quintets that Bohemian-born Anton Reica composed between 1810 and 1820. The Quintets Opus 88 were published in 1818, so they come at a time when Beethoven had completed eight of his nine symphonies and was writing the groundbreaking works of his third creative period, such as the Hammerklavier Sonata of 1818. Heard in this context, Reicha’s compositions have a distinctly old-fashioned ring to them, recalling the eighteenth-century divertimento, and even some touches from the Baroque era, such as the contrapuntal treatment of the scherzo trios. On the other hand, the scherzos themselves—in Op. 88 Nos. 5 and 6 cast in the form of the Ländler—have a Schubertian elegance that bring them very much up to date, as does the sheer magnitude of the compositions. All have lengthy sonata-allegro first movements featuring multiple themes within each theme group. It’s not hard to see why they’re prized by woodwind enthusiasts: they represent the apogee of wind quintet writing in the Classical era.
That said, I find these two quintets a little less distinguished than others by Reicha, though there is some memorable music here, such as the minor-key introduction to No. 6, the Rossinian Siciliano with variations that constitutes the second movement of this work, or those two gentle, Schubertian scherzi. If you’re a fan of the woodwind quintet, you won’t have to be sold on these works; others will want to sample, and there may be better places to start than Opus 88.
With the rerelease of the selections making up the album Sextuor à vent, the Westwood Quintet of the Reicha years comes into competition with its younger self, and the Westwood of the 60s and 70s wins, hands down. Of course, in a musical group that has been around for fifty years, some personnel changes are inevitable. In fact, the only member of the original Westwood still playing is founder and oboist Peter Christ. Though it pains me to say so, he is one of the weaker links in the current incarnation of the Westwood. His tone is somewhat sour, his intonation a bit off. Along with the stiff, uninflected playing of flutist John Barcellona, the high end of the wind quintet is not as well served as in the Westwood’s salad days.
The pieces for alto sax and wind quintet—a combination that the French take special pleasure in and have dubbed sextuor à vent—come from an album released originally in 1978, and they’re an unalloyed pleasure. I’m especially happy to make the acquaintance of German-American composer Bernhard Heiden’s Intrada (1970), with its strangely unsettling, atonal pyramid chords that resolve into some lovely lyrical writing for the combination. The same goes for Hindemith’s Concert Piece for two saxophones, a work that fits in with the composer’s aim to write sonata-form works for just about every instrument under the sun.
Milhaud’s jazzy Scaramouche is quite familiar though not in this particular arrangement; usually it’s heard in its form for two pianos. Bookending the pieces for sax and wind quintet is Pierre Max Dubois’s Sinfonia da Camera. Dubois was a student of Milhaud, and his piece has the same cheeky, devil-may-care qualities of the older composer’s work.
Crystal Records is honest enough to admit that the original program of Sextuor à vent, issued on LP, would represent woefully short timing on a music CD, so they’ve gone back into the vaults and come up with the very first recording by the Westwood, circa 1960. It’s a nice gesture, trying to give buyers their money’s worth, but the group of short encore-style pieces, including snippets from longer works, doesn’t sit entirely comfortably beside the sax-and-wind-quintet offerings on the first half of the program. It might have been a better idea to have included entire works, if available, such as the complete First Quartet (an arrangement of the First Sonata for Strings) of Rossini or all three of Ibert’s Trois Pièces Brèves. Also, the sound quality of these earliest recordings is somewhat less polished, with a bit of glare, a sense of congestion in tutti passages. But the first half of the program is so enjoyable that you may want to overlook these failings; diehard fans of the Westwood Quintet certainly needn’t hesitate.
– Lee Passarella
