Schoenberg - Quintet For Wind Instruments, Op. 26 - The Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet

 

Schwungvoll

Schoenberg

Quintet For Wind Instruments, Op. 28

The Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet

Columbia Masterworks ML 5217

1957

William Kinciad, Flutist

John de Lancie, Oboist

Anthony Gigliotti, Clarinetist

Sol Schoenbach, Bassonist

Mason Jones, French Horn Player

From the back cover: Schoenberg was never a man to write music merely for the sake of doing something. He seems always to have felt that he must have something definite to say, and he preferred that something should be fresh and new. In his later compositions, this general attitude caused him to avoid exact repetitions of his thematic materials. But in addition to this characteristic, there are reasons for supposing that by 1914 he had come to realize, consciously or unconsciously, that the freedom he had gained through espousing atonal music with its equal use of all twelve tones of the chromatic scale was simply not enough. Music may seem to flourish from a completely free use of fancy, but past centuries have demonstrated very conclusively that the difference between man-made music and that of the birds is that man prefers to work within the prescribed limitations of an organized system of tones.

From Billboard - December 2, 1957: Beautiful playing by Philadelphia ensemble softens the somewhat forbidding character of Schoenberg's advanced musical idiom. For the relatively few initiates, the score abounds in excitement; for the average buyer, the 30-year old score is still too avant-garde. Beautiful cover.

Schwongvoll

Anmutig und heiter; scherzando

Etwas Langsam (Poco Adagio)

Rondo