The cheerful, garrulous music of Franz Danzi will be familiar to anyone who has listened to wind quintets. But this quintet by Franz Paul Lachner (1803–90) is new to me, as I suspect it may be to many readers, and it is an extremely attractive piece and a worthwhile addition to the wind quintet repertory. The sleeve-note calls it Schubertian (Lachner was an acquaintance of Schubert's in the mid 1820s, when as a young man he worked in Vienna), and there are certainly touches, harmonic ones in particular, that bring Schubert to mind; but Lachner's handling of the wind textures, his use of contrapuntally imitative passages and his working of motifs seem to me quite individual and often skilful and imaginative. The first movement, with its sturdy octave figure, its felicitous harmony and its appealing sound (the clarinet is often kept busy adding vitality to the textures) is particularly arresting, but the Andante with its gentle chromaticisms and its deft use of accompanying figures, is warm in feeling; there is a vigorous minuet with a Landlerisch trio, and a well developed finale with an ingenious syncopated theme and with much distinctive writing for the various instruments notably a brilliant flourish for the flute and clarinet in octaves. The work has a true romantic flavour in a way that the Danzi quintets (and also the popular Reicha ones) do not.
The playing on this disc is extremely accomplished—beautifully tuned, precise in articulation (listen to the repeated-note figures in the first movement of the G minor Danzi), mellifluous and assured in style, and indeed often virtuoso as well. A clear and well balanced recording helps make this an unusually appealing disc of its kind.'