Capel Bond, born in Gloucester in 1730, spent his working life in the West Midlands, where he was organist of the church that was to become Coventry Cathedral from 1749 until his death in 1790. His only known compositions are the six concertos recorded here and a set of six anthems. These concertos belong in what was an established English tradition, which it is easy to write off as 'sub-Handel' but which in fact possesses a certain identity and character of its own. Those interested in this period will probably have come across the concertos of John Stanley, Charles Avison and Thomas Arne, just possibly those of Richard Mudge too, and the symphonies of William Boyce; there are others, too, and I hope these players will bring more of them to our notice.
The music is not in fact very Handelian in spite of a few odd reminiscences and pseudo-echoes, it is not even much indebted to Corelli, who was in fact more popular than Handel among English lovers of instrumental music at this time, though the influence of Geminiani, almost equally popular, can be detected in some structural details. There is a quite distinctive English style and flavour: the movements are nearly all brief, there are a lot of fugues (even as late as 1766, the date of this set, by when J. C. Bach had already been in London for four years) and the slower movements usually partake of a gentle, almost wistful flavour here and there tinged with folksy little touches to the melody. Bond begins his set with a concerto with solo trumpet, and ends it with a charming bassoon concerto—the third movement of this attractively exemplifies this vein of 'rural' melody. Of the four concertos for strings, three are in four movements, with a fugue second, Bond clearly took fugue writing seriously and provided well worked-out pieces, though (perhaps predictably at this date) the actual invention is rather short-breathed and there is a certain amount of standard contrapuntal cliche. But there are some attractive, mildly original touches too and plenty to surprise the ear. Nearly all the slowish movements are in triple time and some are very graceful and beguiling—there is a charming galant one in No. 2, marked amoroso and played with due affection though rather slowly, an attractive one (affettuoso) to round off No. 3, and a quicker, tuneful one in No. 4, which ends with a spirited Allegro. Several of the opening movements especially those of the three minor-key concertos are sombre-toned, at least to start with, though the invention usually softens quite soon. This isn't, then, great music, but a lot of it is appealing, and I hope I have said enough to encourage readers to investigate it.
Crispian Steele-Perkins plays the trumpet part cleanly and Sally Jackson is the affectionate bassoon soloist. The string playing is stylish, but I often felt that a more incisive approach—the attack is apt to be spongy—might sometimes have been helpful; though I do appreciate the players' clearly deliberate intention not to bring any sort of high-powered manner to music to which it clearly does not belong.'