These three discs form part of Capriccio's excellent contribution to last year's somewhat low-key celebration of the 250th anniversary of Boccherini's birth. He was a prolific and inventive composer of chamber music, but in terms of historical fame he has been variously upstaged by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert; only in recent years has he begun to attain the column-inches he deserves in The Classical Catalogue. Compositionally, he was outside the mainstream of his times and it is well nigh impossible to assign him to any particular 'school', and seldom profitable to make the comparisons to which we so often resort; he was very much his own man—and famous throughout Europe in his own time. His originality is vividly apparent in the Quintet, G324, written in 1780 when he was firmly ensconced in Madrid. Solemn chords on the cello represent the bell of the Ave Maria and guitar-like pizzicatos pervade much of the night-music that follows—he rearranged the final ritirata to end his Guitar Quintet, G453; the cellists are asked to hold their instruments across their knees, like guitars. It is coupled with three other titled works: the name of the later (c. 1792) String Quartet, La Tiranna, most probably refers to the slow triple-time dance, the tirana. The relevance of the title of the final movement of the Violin Duet, G62 (c. 1766), La bona notte, remains mysterious, but not that of the Quintet, G336—the cellos imitate the eponymous Jew's harp in the first movement.
Most of Boccherini's numerous string quintets were scored with one viola and two cellos (an innovation) and the last of that genre was written in 1795. There followed 12 quintets with two violas (1797-9), reworkings of piano quintets, and finally 12 more (1801-2), original works, dedicated to the French Ambassador Lucien (''Luciano'') Bonaparte, in which two violas were specified—maybe by that time Boccherini was not taking part in performances (or his technique had lost its brilliance), and cellists of his stature were then rare. Two of these quintets, G393 and G401, are included in the programme of 10 452. Puppo described Boccherini as ''Haydn's wife''—but natural grace, sweetness, charm and ingenuity, all abundant in his music, are hardly pejorative terms, and those brief ''explosive passages'' to which SS refers in Grove are no less 'wifely'! To these amiable virtues may be added those of superb craftsmanship, unexcelled know-ledge of the capabilities of bowed strings, and acute sensitivity to instrumental colour—evident in the variety of his textures as well as in the 'special effects' of which the above-mentioned 'Jew's harp' is a remarkable example.
The concept of quintets for oboe or flute with string quartet was another Boccherini 'first'. Two sets of six such works are for the flute, but of those in this recording (G431-6), all but one in two movements, are for flute or oboe. Boccherini referred in a letter, to the ''extraordinary sweetness'' of tone of his oboist friend Gaspar Barli, who probably played these quintets; I am sure he would have been no less pleased with that of Lajos Lencses, as he would also by the sweetly shaped and finely recorded performances by the Parisii Quartet—and those on the other two discs. All three discs are warmly recommended.'