I had been wondering what was left for Vol. 1 of this series, bearing in mind that all Boccherini's true early symphonies had already been included. Enterprisingly, Johannes Goritzki and his players offer a group of orchestral pieces that are close to symphonies but not so called.
The first work here is as much concerto as symphony, Boccherini, like most of his contemporaries, never saw the borderline quite as sharply as we do, and G491 is entitled ''concerto'' in his manuscript and falls somewhere in the sinfonia concertante region—there is a lot of solo writing, some for two violins, some for cello and some for other instruments, but essentially it is a symphonic work with a lot of solo music and concerto-like sections. (Mozart's K190 Concertone is not all that different.) I have to say that it is not one of Boccherini's best pieces. The first movement is slender in musical content, in proportion to its length, and the minuet-like finale is not very characteristic (and it has a strange non-cadenza near the end, which I can't believe was meant to be performed as here); the best music comes in the Adagio, with a cello solo of ''sweetness and melancholy'' (I quote Christian Speck's excellent notes which are scholarly and sensitive). The next work G523, is a close relation. Boccherini drew on G491 first for a string quintet, then for this symphony-concerto—the main difference being that the solo music is now quite differently disposed, with a prominent guitar part (intended for an aristocratic guitarist patron).
The third work is much shorter, a typical Italian overture of the mid-1760s, designed first for a cantata and then twice recycled for other vocal works. It is a delightful and entirely characteristic piece, with a witty first movement, a charming Andante grazioso and a brief, spirited finale. All this music is played with style (a small lapse in the G490 first movement, where there is some odd treatment of dynamics) and with skill by Goritzki's group, and the solo work is first-rate. This disc isn't as compelling as most of the others in the series, inevitably, but it usefully fills a little gap in our knowledge of the composer.'