Franz Krommer’s wind music dates from a golden age of wind music composition, a time where profound sentiments, intellectual discourse, and delicacy of expression in instrumental music was not seen to be the sole domain of strings or piano. As all of Krommer’s superlative wind music, the quartets Op. 46 are highly instrumentally idiomatic and often virtuosic. They exploit the full three octave range of the period bassoon to dramatic effect, use a full palette of tonal colours and textures, and feature many different effects at which the bassoon excels; running staccato figures, wide intervallic leaps, as well as soaring tenor cantabile lines. The Island Quartet was founded in 1999 in order to explore the unjustly neglected early 19th century repertoire for bassoon, violin, viola and cello, on the instruments of the era.
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