Mozart: Adagio for Cor Anglais and String Trio, K580a

“This is a performance that can stand as a benchmark” BBC Music Magazine

“The Sheffield-based Ensemble 360 – a flexible group of up to 11 players – have been drawing enthusiastic audiences with their informal and inventive concerts, often in offbeat venues. As this attractively planned debut CD confirms, their playing is fresh and lively, free from any whiff of bland routine. The Flute Quartet, offered as an aperitif, is blithe and impish in its outer movements, delicately, coolly wistful in the Watteau-esque Adagio.
In the miraculous Piano and Wind Quintet, Ensemble 360 phrase imaginatively, delight in their quick-witted repartee, and handle the ever-shifting balances with care and finesse.
Ensemble 360 are marvellously vivid in the finale, here less gracious, more playful than usual, with the main theme's contrasts of forte and piano piquantly realised.
The unfinished Adagio, K580a, opening uncannily like the motet Ave verum corpus, was probably intended for clarinet and three bassethorns, though it sounds well enough in this (anonymous) completed version for cor anglais and strings. Best of all here is the Clarinet Quintet, performed by Matthew Hunt on the basset clarinet, with its treacly extra low notes displayed to pungent effect in, say, the Ländler-like second Trio of the Minuet. With its briskish speeds, this won't necessarily please those who like to have the Quintet's autumnal associations underlined. But the performance has a natural flow and grace allied to many sensitive touches of colour and timing. Especially appealing are the fire and tension of the first-movement development, the easy lilt of the Minuet (wittily embellished on its final repeat) and the finale's gleeful sense of fun, stilled in the haunting A minor variation, where the solo viola makes delicately expressive use of portamento. The rollicking send-off sets the seal on a touching and thoroughly delightful performance.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Christopher O'Neal's playing of both oboe and cor anglais is bright, incisive and elegantly turned… His colleagues match his artistry and expertise, not least with unusually well characterised string playing in the Mozart Quartet.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2009 ****

“…Christopher O'Neal's… playing on this most diverting anthology offers unbridled pleasure in its impeccable expertise, agile grace, tasteful expression and appealing variety of colour and tone. Boasting realistic sound and balance, this disc makes for delightful late-evening listening and earns an easy recommendation.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2009

“There's the courtly charm of Mozart's Oboe Quartet in F Major, K 370; Crusell's more flamboyant Divertimento; Poulenc's Trio, with lively passages sandwiching a sweetly poignant central section; a couple of genteel duets with harp, by Alwyn and Elgar; and the stand-out piece, Francaix's Quator à vents, a woodwind quartet of sharply contrasting moods culminating in a wonderful pastoral Allegro vivo.” The Independent, 10th April 2009

“...superlative performances by Holliger and the ECO. As in the case of Fiala, not just an oboe-player: Holliger also contributes cadenzas where called for that are exactly right for their purpose. A good quality of recording” Gramophone Magazine, October 1985