Customer Reviews

Boccherini: String Quintets, Vol. 4

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This is the 4th in a continuing series of Boccherini's cello quintets. His quintets are unique in music history not just because of the orchestration (string quartet + an extra cello that often is sent into the viola and violin's range) but because it is here more than anywhere else that he fully pulls back the curtains on his own musical personality and ideas. He is a classical composer to be sure, but his view of music was not at all that of Mozart and Haydn. Perhaps this is best explained by saying that if all the greats (Bach, Teleman, Corelli, Tartini, Hadyn, etcetera) were in a room discussing counterpoint, Boccherini would be the guy over in the corner, looking out the window at the shapes in the clouds. That is to say that if you expect him to have the same musical ideas as the rest of the greats, you will be perplexed. However, if you clean the slate and just let him be himself, you're in for a beautiful ride.

The first quintet is in c minor and Boccherini makes wonderful use of its key. It opens in the shadows with a sprinkling of agitation which is used to push the music into the sunshine, though it soon finishes its course there and returns to the shadows, though these shadows are melancholy rather than forlorn. Its best movement is its last which hits you like sudden hard spatters of rain on your windshield in its wonderful agitation. This doesn't last long, however, and the music soon turns charming, going on to oscillate between rough and gentle. Now I must say that Boccherini was never really able to ride agitation all through the length of a piece and I fault him for that, but the results here may be okay without that - you be the judge.

The adagio of the second quintet is quite a gem. It is gentle and beautiful in its melancholy as Boccherini always is. The mood clears up with an optimistic minuetto and a pretty allegro, but overall this work is little more than pretty.

Regal warmth is the fabric of the third quintet as its opening allegro starts with a romp and a texture that is reminiscent of hunting horns. This is a more complex piece that takes you much further than its two predecessors. It is here that you can hear the second cello reaching out of its normal range (it sounds different than a viola/violin in its higher registers so if you listen you can tell it apart pretty easily).

Building off of the third, the fourth quintet begins to make this opus into something substantial. The opening allegro is quite beautiful, graceful, inventive and really very well done. Remember those cloud shapes? You'll find them in the largo.

The fifth quintet starts off a bit more troubled in mood than its friends, though it soon joins their warm spirits only to decide it is better off in its trouble. All ends well though as its crossness crafts it into something noble.

The sixth piece is much more shy than its friends, though, like its composer, it has great beauty in its shyness.

Overall this is an interesting listen with charm throughout and an equal mixture of things that are "pretty-and-nothing-more" and things that have some substance and bite to them. La Magnifica does a superb job playing and the recording is clean throughout.

Boccherini published his first six Quintets with two cellos in 1771, shortly after he'd committed himself to a career in Spain that extended for the rest of his life. The quintets were written and published, like all such chamber music of the period, for the enjoyment of musicians - players, not listeners, both performing professionals and amateurs. My apologies to all music lovers who listen but never play, but the greatest pleasures of chamber music are not for you. There's a level of sheer physical pleasure in such music that only the player can experience, and that was the level to which Boccherini was most devotedly attentive. So.. if you really want to love this music, get out your "air cello" and saw along! This is music to 'hear' with your proprioceptive body.

[That notion, by the way, is developed brilliantly in the scholarly book "Boccherini's Body" by cellist/musicologist Elizabeth Leguin.]

Boccherini has been persistently labeled a composer of the second rank, charming but not profound. In fact, he was an innovator of the first rank, in some ways a century and a half ahead of his contemporaries. This first set of Quintets established the structural possibilities of a form that was in effect Boccherini's own invention. Pay attention, for instance, to what the composer 'discovers' about the acoustic variety - the interior duos, trios, quartets - possible in a quintet. But Boccherini was also exploring the virtuosic capabilities of the string instruments themselves: the resonances and timbres, the sounds that could be extracted by different uses of the bow, the upper range of the cello, his own instrument. Boccherini was by far the first composer to treat the cello as the dominant voice in the quintet or quartet, and he was 'way ahead' of his Austrian "husband" in distributing the musical interest of his quintets to all five instruments in balance. Pay attention to the sound effects Boccherini achieves by deliberate doubling at octaves and by tricky double-stopping. Sound effects! This is music 'profoundly' attentive to sound as such, rather than to melodic architecture. Not until the 20th C was any composer so profoundly attentive to sheer Sound.

But there's more than just acoustic stimuli to this music. There's also Boccherini's discovery of Spain, of an Iberian musical heritage that Northern Europe was forgetting. Boccherini, the Italian wanderer, was to become the Founding Father of modern Spanish classicism, preserving and formalizing the 'fandango' spirit of the Spanish Golden Age. There's plenty of profundity in Boccherini's rediscovery of the New World.

La Magnifica Comunità deserves its name; they play magnificently on their 'period' instruments, and their 'period' instruments serve the musical vocabulary of Beccherini's quintets in ways that 'modern' strings can never match. The ensemble is attempting to record all 176 (one hundred seventy-six!) of Boccherini's quintets, over a period of years. So far they have released nine volumes, up to opus 39, so they are still short of half way. All nine recordings are "Magnifica"!

Nice music. I love Boccherini! What a great buy for a two disc set! Search the internet thoroughly for the best deals! This is a great cd for ambient music! Boccherini, Tartini, and Corelli were all fantastic composers, if you like this genre of music. Loaded ok on my computer. The covers seem to reflect the feelings, times, and spirit of the music on these Boccherini cd's.

Good Evening!!

Boccherini was a master of the String Quintet, and sadly overlooked today. The ensemble featured in this series offers a traditional, conservative, and loving interpretation to these compositions. However, as a word of warning: the quality of the recordings and the discs themselves is subpar. The tone of the discs is low and I have to play the cds on a higher than normal level. Also I have encountered some problems both here in volume four and back in volume one with the discs skipping, freezing, and fluttering. I've cleaned the discs to no avail. So, let the buyer beware, I have not had a lot of experience with the label Brilliant Classics, but so far I'm not impressed. Too bad that one of the higher quality recording companies didn't pick up this series; it deserves better.