Here is superlative woodwind and horn playing, kept in perfect balance (rare, and difficult for that particular combination) by a recording which, equally good in tone-quality, balance and clarity, can also be described as superlative.
So far, compulsory listening without a doubt. And also no doubts at all about Ligeti's Six Bagatelles, transcriptions made in 1953 of six movements from an earlier set of pieces (Musica Ricercata) for piano solo. In them Ligeti explores the possibilities of using only notes from groups of varied restrictions; but foreknowledge of the use of this very personal technical method is not at all necessary to enjoy the apparent freedom and joy of the music itself: alive, alert, and very happy. A close approach to such a success if also made by the Mathias Quintet, of which the movement titling in places seems odd, though the music itself certainly does not. Pretty immediately attractive, it nevertheless does not seem quite so obviously to derive from the consideration of what suits the combination of instruments concerned (does a waltz, for example?) as does the Ligeti (though this Ligeti is the one which is an arrangement!).
The Barber Summer Music, as it happens, explores the point considerably more forcefully. For it explores, agreeably enough, the sounds of summer in varied fashion, and at some length; and if the description puts you in mind of Delius, then now and again a bar or two suggests that Barber, too, knew and acknowledged that composer. But these and some other of the sounds do not seem, it this length (some 12 1/2 minutes), obvious material for a woodwind quintet.
Finally, Mark Carlson explores the medium with his Nightwings. Primarily a Californian composer, he is also (the record's booklet tells us) a flautist, a movement teacher, and a practitioner of structural integration not all of which I understand. The explorations are of a dream-world, for which the quintet is assisted by electronics. The non-electronic music is somewhat on the feeble side, but the relatively uninhibited electronics do add interest to the dream sequence. There is a good supply of the noises-off which normally indicate to a user of electronics that his equipment is malfunctioning; but also there is the creation of a fascinating conflation of half the dripping taps of the world.
Nightwings, then, is probably for specialists. Elsewhere the music ranges from splendid to never less than enjoyable; and it benefits from the marvellous playing and recording accorded, of course, to everything on the disc. Production, though, is sadly and quite unnecessarily at fault; it allows only two to three seconds between the movements of multi-movement works, and six to seven seconds between separate works. This is not enough.'