Even the doughtiest music lover could go through life without hearing a note – or even the name – of the Austrian composer Ludwig Thuille. But two chamber works have now found a place in the CD catalogue, notably the Sextet for piano and wind written in 1887, the year of his marriage, just 20 years before his death at the age of only 45.
From its first two movements, few people would guess that Thuille was only three years older than his fellow-student and good friend, Richard Strauss: every bar suggests that his hero was Brahms. But the two lighter-textured final movements – not least the Gavotte, replacing a traditional scherzo – enter a new world of insouciant Gallic charm. Not for nothing did Thuille’s ancestors hail from France. The players respond wholeheartedly to the full-bodied fervour of the Allegro moderato and Larghetto. In the resonant church acoustic I even wondered, at times, if keyboard and horn were a little too close and dominant. The last two lighter movements show them at their nimblest and neatest as a team. In sum, a welcome diversion from the beaten track for anyone who missed the earlier Stuttgart Wind Quintet recording praised in these pages a decade ago.
Whereas that disc was completed by Poulenc’s Sextet, here we’re given Beethoven’s much-recorded youthful Quintet for piano and wind. I enjoyed the incisive first movement and some very shapely, expressive phrasing in the Andante cantabile, where each instrument can sing as a soloist. But lively semiquavers in the ‘hunting’ finale bring passing problems for the pianist in terms of rhythmic control and general finesse, and overall the performance is not a match for Perahia and ECO members or Lupu et al.'