“Boxwood & Brass prove dazzlingly persuasive advocates of the form... vibrant musicality, a wonderful warmth of sound and total technical precision... these thoughtful and assured performances bring to life every subtlety and colour in these works. ”
“Creamy clarinets combine attractively with punchy horns and burbling bassoons to give this music a special Viennese verve.”
Beethoven Transformed
Beethoven Transformed presents Beethoven’s music reimagined by his contemporaries for 6- and 9-part Harmonie. Boxwood & Brass reveal how what today are venerated ‘masterpieces’ were once treated with much greater liberty. These fascinating arrangements shed new light on familiar music and display the artistry of the leading wind players of Beethoven’s time.
Volume 1: Harmoniemusik as Chamber Music for 6-part Harmonie RES10249
Beethoven arr. Czerny: Septet Op. 20
Beethoven: Sextet Op. 71
Beethoven Transformed vol. 1 sees the blurring of boundaries between the previously separate genres of chamber music and Harmoniemusik. In his beautiful Sextet Op. 71 for clarinets, horns and bassoons the young Beethoven experiments with bringing chamber music dialogue into the Harmonie. Beethoven’s most popular chamber work, the Septet for wind and strings Op. 20, is heard here for the first time in an 1805 arrangement by his student and trusted friend Carl Czerny. Czerny’s arrangement, based on Beethoven’s working manuscript of the Septet, includes some of the composer’s early ideas that were omitted from the final version (read more). Czerny transforms the Septet into a virtuoso tour-de-force for winds, showing exceptional understanding of the possibilities of early 19th-century instruments.
Emily Worthington and Fiona Mitchell, clarinets
Robert Percival and Takako Kunugi, bassoons
Anneke Scott and Kate Goldsmith, natural horns
clarinets and bassoons after H. Grenser, Dresden c. 1810
horns by M. A. Raoux and Courtois neveu aîné, Paris c. 1820
Beethoven Transformed was made possible thanks to funding from the University of Huddersfield.