Los Últimos Trios

Luigi Boccherini wrote in excess of a hundred string quintets, nearly a hundred string quartets, and sixty-odd string trios. Not to mention all his piano trios, piano quintets, flute quintets, guitar quintets and assorted sonatas; nor the dozen cello concertos & thirty symphonies. He wasn't shy about reusing and recycling sections of earlier works in later ones, but even so, he turned out a prodigious quantity of music, which makes its consistently high quality all the more impressive. The present disc includes four of his last string trios, written in Madrid in 1796.

The default string trio line-up is violin, viola and cello, but these pieces were composed for two violins and cello, played here by the group La Real Cámera comprising Emilio Moreno and Enrico Gatti (violins) plus Wouter Möller (cello). Moreno is also responsible for the booklet notes in which he characterises trios written for this instrumentation as "a difficult, arid and obsolete form ... a remnant of the old baroque trio sonata." Out of this tricky fabric, Boccherini fashioned some characteristically elegant and graceful results.

It's not my very favourite Boccherini album, but it is one I keep returning to, especially for the first two trios on it: nos. 2 and 4 of the Op. 54 set. It's a well-presented disc too: a 2005 re-issue of a 1995 recording on the Glossa label in a three-panel 'digipak' with a detail of a Goya painting on the cover, and including a 36-page booklet. The cover choice is an appropriate one, as Boccherini and Goya were contemporaries, whose paths are known to have crossed on at least a couple of occasions.

Comments

All Wrapped Up

Here's another of the compilation cassettes I bought this summer, having taken home a Denon twin-deck hi-fi cassette player from the local charity shop. All Wrapped Up is a 1983 compilation of singles by The Undertones, with Side One filled with A-sides, and B-sides on Side Two. A cassette must be the least desirable medium for such an arrangement, with a long rewind required if one just wants to hear the hits repeatedly. The Undertones were unapologetically provincial and anti-fashionable, with their songs sharply-written slices of life that pointedly avoided any mention of politics, or of the then-continuing violence in their native Derry. My favourite tracks are the obvious choices: 'Teenage Kicks', 'Jimmy Jimmy', 'Here Comes the Summer', 'My Perfect Cousin' & 'Wednesday Week'. Their later singles showed increased sophistication but lack the some of the straightforward charm of their earlier work. The B-sides, not unexpectedly, are mo...

In Heat

Having acquired the soubriquet "the walrus of love", Barry White thereafter became something of a figure of fun, something that misled me (and presumably others) into disregarding his music. Only within the last few years have I begun to pay it more attention. After picking up a copy of his '74 album Can't Get Enough last summer, which I loved, I sought out some of the music by his protegés Love Unlimited. From a Discogs seller I ordered well-used copies of Under the Influence of... ('73) and In Heat ('74) for only £6.25. The only unappealing thing about In Heat is its awful title. The songs and the singing are strong; the arrangements rich & warmly enveloping. As one would expect from White, the thematic focus is firmly fixed on amatory matters. The opening number 'Move Me No Mountain' (the only one on the record not written by White) offers a refreshing rebuttal to the kind of lyrical hyperbole in songs like 'Ain't No Mountain High E...

Bananas Are Not Created Equal

I knew Jay Berliner's name from his contributions to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and Charles Mingus' The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady , so when I saw this curiously-titled LP at the local charity shop I was intrigued, and bought it even though I had no idea what kind of music it might contain. This was after the days when one could still buy records there for a pound apiece, but I don't think I paid more than a fiver for it. The music turned out to be an all-instrumental blend of funk, soul & jazz. Berliner's virtuoso lead guitar is only one of many attractions here. The band of first-rate session musicians behind him are all uniformly excellent too, and, crucially, sound like they're having a blast. Cornell Dupree's supporting guitar work, while less showy than Berliner's, is beautifully-judged, and the rhythm section is terrific. Arranger/conductor Wade Marcus was no slouch either, judging from the way everything comes together. Two of the funk...

This is a Recording

Search This Blog