Omnibus Wind Ensemble - Sotto Il Segno Del Sole - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Berkeley / Benjamin / Horsley / Crowson - Piano Works [COMPACT DISCS] date 11/11/2008

This album features the live recording of the concert given by Trio Lirico and pianist Josu de Solaun at the Fundacion Juan March in Madrid on April 23, 2025. It marks the world premiere recording of the two piano quartets composed in 1902 by the Spanish composers Vicente Zurron and Bartolome Perez Casas. The beginning of the 20th century represented a creative breakthrough in Spain, where chamber music had previously been limited to private settings and personal enjoyment. The expansion of chamber music into public concert halls inspired local composers to explore the genre - an impulse reflected in the recovery of these long-overlooked works.

This is the first recording on Channel Classics with the Italian based MIB Ensemble. Comprising the best players from the top orchestras of Italy, the ensemble felt the need to create their own ensemble to fill the gap in repertoire and concert possibilities for wind instruments. The two major early composers having written for winds would indeed be Mozart and Beethoven so there is no better fitting pieces than the two octets combined with the Rondino of Beethoven. Though considered 'Tafelmusik' - music for special occasions, street music, the Mozart Serenade first movement is anything but street music - no friendly and polite little piece of entertainment, but a serious, sometimes threatening eight-part wind music full of chromaticism, dramatic leaps and definitely unfestive dissonances. Beethoven's Octet also has the classical 4 movement structure but wrote the piece as an official concert piece.