The concept behind this intriguing, delightfully played programme is the development of the British wind quintet decade by decade from 1963 to 2010. The result is a richly varied sextet of pieces, but with no stylistic extremes…
Oliver Knussen’s Three Little Fantasies (1970, rev 1983) may be the slightest in duration of the featured works (less than seven minutes in full) but size, as they say, isn’t everything… It is followed by Elizabeth Maconchy’s masterly Quintet (1980), astonishingly receiving here its first recording…
Scarcely less accomplished is Thea Musgrave’s single-movement Quintet (1992)… Gavin Higgins’s sombre After Fallout … (2010) brings us into the new millennium with another concentrated single-span work. As with the Maconchy and Beamish, this is its first recording.
“The Lumas Quintet… perform each work with élan and Champs Hill’s sound is first-rate.”
