This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.



WAGNER Der fliegende Holländer • Marek Janowski, cond; Albert Dohman ( Dutchman ); Matti Salminen ( Daland ); Ricarda Merbeth ( Senta ); Robert Dean Smith ( Erik ); Silvia Hablowetz ( Mary ); Steve Davislim ( Steersman ); Berlin RSO & Ch • PENTATONE PTC 5186 400 (2 SACDs: 126:30 Text and Translation) Live: Berlin 11/13/2010


This release marks the beginning of an SACD traversal from PentaTone of the 10 frequently performed Wagner operas. In a charmingly old-fashioned gesture, PentaTone will provide with each of the first nine sets a voucher that, if you collect them all, entitles you to a 50-percent price reduction for the final item ( Götterdämmerung, due in November 2013) or—for free—a “special CD collection box.” A cool marketing idea. I wonder if other Wagnerian promotion schemes were kicked around: “Collect them all, kids, and get a free Tarnhelm!”


Something can be said for concert performances of Wagner’s operas. (Studio recordings, for economic reasons, are largely a thing of the past.) There’s no possibility of directorial malpractice, something that these works seem to attract. I just returned from the 100th Bayreuth Festival where I encountered, among much else of questionable merit, a Lohengrin where the good citizens of Brabant were all laboratory rats, a Parsifal with a transvestite Klingsor sporting black fishnet stockings, and a Tannhäuser set in a chemical plant for no good reason. The focus in concert, by default, is on the music, and this inaugural release has got the goods. Marek Janowski provides dramatic impetus to the proceedings but also assures that the orchestra’s role is never slighted. He lingers appealingly as he plays the excerpt from Senta’s Ballad heard in the overture, and there’s a joyous swing to the Entr’acte leading into Holländer ’s final two scenes. Janowski makes the most of the Italianate aspects of the score, including a lovely, lyrical Steersman’s Lied in act I (courtesy of the excellent Australian singer Steve Davislim) and, of course, the very Verdian finale of act II. The chorus, prepared by Eberhart Friedrich, director of the Bayreuth Festival Chorus since 2000, does its job with an incredible precision that would be impossible in the context of a staged production.


An excellent cast was assembled for this live recording that documents a single performance at the Berlin Philharmonie on November 13, 2010. Leading the charge are Albert Dohman, highly regarded for his Wotan (as heard on Et’Cetera SACDs with Harmut Haenchen, and on Opus Arte with Christian Thielemann from Bayreuth) and Matti Salminen, one of the world’s go-to basses for Gurnemanz, Marke, Hagan, and Hunding. Salminen sings a hearty Daland and makes the most of Wagner’s songful passages. His aria toward the end of act II (“Mögst du, mein Kind”) has a Mozartean grace and fluidity. Dohman’s performance is equally impressive. His voice, like Salminen’s, is inherently appealing yet imbued with the tortured quality the role demands; we sense the same anguish that Wotan radiates in act II of Die Walküre or the beginning of Siegfried ’s last act. The Dutchman’s bitterness and sorrow are powerfully portrayed without scenery-chewing.


To my taste, Ricarda Merbeth’s soprano is a bit squally and insufficiently youthful-sounding. There could be more of a sense of “ever-increasing agitation” (“immer zunehmender Aufregung fort”) as she progresses through the three stanzas of Senta’s Ballad. On the other hand, Kansas-born Robert Dean Smith’s handsome Heldentenor instrument—he’s been Bayreuth’s Tristan since 2005—assures that Erik is a more compelling character than is often the case.


As usual, PentaTone’s high-resolution sonics are superb. Multichannel makes clear a mid-hall audience perspective that still provides plenty of involving impact, but places offstage horns way off in the distance. (Spatially, the sound is still more than satisfactory in stereo.) PentaTone’s 140-page booklet is bound into the cardboard package and there are heavy paper sleeves attached as well to hold the two discs. There’s a German/English libretto that, unfortunately, isn’t indexed to the tracks on the discs. The booklet also includes substantial liner notes by Steffen Georgi, the dramaturge for the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, which is to say that he gives lectures before many of the ensemble’s concerts. Recommended—and don’t lose that voucher!


FANFARE: Andrew Quint

Classical Music

Award-winning conductor Kazuki Yamada leads Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in an all French program of highly melodious music. Most recently Kazuki Yamada was the winner at the 51st Besancon International Competition for young conductors in 2009, receiving the audience award as well as the Grand Prize.

Bold, turbulent defiance sits alongside pained introspection and bittersweet reverie in this penetrating recital of Brahms piano works by the acclaimed young Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin in his eagerly awaited second recording for Pentatone.

The seven pieces comprising the Fantasias, Op. 116 are quite different in mood but are nevertheless intricately constructed to produce poetic miniatures of great depth and sonority, requiring sensitive artistry to convey their sense of unity and poignancy.

Brahms is in a more full-bloodied and demonstrative mood with the four character pieces in the much earlier Ballades, Op. 10, but these too show moments of transcendent beauty. And in the rarely heard Theme and Variations, Op. 18b, Brahms's sumptuous and instantly seductive arrangement of the second movement of his String Sextet, he produces an arresting and magisterial work with exquisite tone coloration and a hushed, sublime ending.

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These are masterfully crafted renditions, expressive and passionate, perfect in their timing, phrasing, and dynamic structure, as well as grandly conceived in scope.

– Opus Klassiek (Netherlands)

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Aspects of America presents a fascinating collection of 20th- and 21st-century American orchestral music, ranging from “good old” Samuel Barber’s Souvenirs to pieces by esteemed living composers such as Sean Shepherd (Magiya), Sebastian Currier (Microsymph) and Christopher Rouse (Supplica). The centerpiece of this album is Portland-based composer Kenji Bunch’s Aspects of an Elephant, inspired by the timeless parable of six men who try to discern the traits of an elephant in a pitch-dark room, eventually discovering that only the sum of their perceptions encompasses the full truth. In a similar way, the pieces featured on this album constitute a rich panorama of the dynamism and diversity of contemporary American composition. Bunch’s piece is dedicated to the members of the Oregon Symphony, who release their fifth album with Pentatone, after Music for a Time of War (2011), This England (2012), Spirit of the American Range (2015) and Haydn Symphonies 53, 64 & 96 (2017). On Aspects of America, they again play under the spirited leadership of music director Carlos Kalmar.

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REVIEW:

This is a superbly played and astutely programmed disc covering just over sixty-five years of music from the tonal end of the spectrum, and all world-premiere recordings but one.

– The Arts Fuse (J. Blumhofer)

With it's combination of three instrumental movements, followed by a cantata with three soloists and chorus, Mendelssohn's Second Symphony "Lobgesang [Hymn of Praise]" is highly original from a conceptual point of view. The piece is a milestone in the history of the symphonic form, stretching the seams of the symphony genre even further than Beethoven had dared with his "Choral" Ninth. In his Lobgesang, Mendelssohn achieved nothing less than the artistic destruction of the conceptual opposition of vocal and instrumental music. Here they enter into a relationship of constructive, mutual support in the service of music. Moreover, the Biblical lyrics express Mendelssohn's deeply-felt religiosity. This album completes Pentatone's Mendelssohn Symphonies series with the NDR Radiophilharmonie and conductor Andrew Manze. After winning the Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2017 for their recording of Symphonies 1 & 3 and the positive reception of Symphonies 4 & 5, expectations are high for this final piece of the puzzle. On this album, the NDR Radiophilharmonie and Andrew Manze join forces with the NDR Chor and WDR Rundfunkchor, as well as with an excellent cast of soloists: sopranos Anna Lucia Richter and Esther Dierkes and tenor Robin Tritschler.

The spirit of Gustav Mahler looms over the pages of Shostakovich’s turbulent, sprawling and enigmatic Symphony No. 4, a work so uncompromising that for many years he suppressed its performance, fearing public censure. Mixing bombast with banality, savagery with sarcasm, this baffling yet profound work is also one of his most startlingly original. It’s paired with his ever popular Symphony No. 10, a brooding and lyrical masterpiece which is said to contain a musical portrait of Joseph Stalin in the impetuous second movement and in whose third and fourth movements Shostakovich artfully weaves a musical motif based on his own name which emerges resplendent in the spirited finale. This triumphant release is the latest in a series of recordings for Pentatone by the Russian National Orchestra. Their Shostakovich cycle was widely acclaimed as “the most exciting cycle of the Shostakovich symphonies to be put down…and easily the best recorded.” (SACD.net). The Symphony No. 7, conducted by Paavo Järvi, won the Diapason d’Or de l’annee 2015 and was nominated for a 2016 Grammy Award for Best Suurpund Sound recording.

Love is a rollercoaster, and so is this swinging new take on Virgil’s classical tragedy. Dido & Aeneazz is a recomposition of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas by Raaf Hekkema, combined with newly-composed music arranged by Eric Vloeimans. The album showcases the congenial collaboration between the versatile reed players of Calefax and renowned trumpet player Eric Vloeimans. Dido & Aeneazz invites the listener to join a musical journey that virtuously flows from the baroque original to jazz, calypso and klezmer, and back. Acclaimed in the Netherlands and abroad, the members of Calefax arguably invented a completely new genre: the reed quintet. After their successful PENTATONE debut with Hidden Gems, these gentlemen add yet another treasure to their discography.

Dazzling keyboard artistry from the Kodama sisters in rare arrangements of Tchaikovsky's evergreen ballets. Together for the first time in the recording studio, the sisters Mari and Momo Kodama are on scintillating form in these lively arrangements of music from Tchaikovsky's ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker. In another first, the release contains the first ever recording of Arensky's transcription of the timeless Nutrcracker together with notable arrangements by Debussy and Rachmaninov. "Tchaikovsky was really the first composer to combine a broad sweep of ballet music with a great story," the Kodama sisters write in their introduction to the release, "before that, it more resembled a compilation of pieces...in all three works there is folkloric and popular music. He has the great skill to make scuh vivid colors and textures on a large canvas...This makes his orchestral works very special." The sisters Mari and Momo Kodama both pursue busy international careers. Momo specializes in French and Japanese composers and 20th century and contemporary composers - she has been widely praised for her "attractive, lyrical tone" and "technical brilliance". Mari has established an international reputation for profound musicality and articulate virtuosity - she has recorded extensively for Pentatone, including an acclaimed cycle of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas

Called “one of the most original and compelling jazz albums in recent memory” (Montreal Gazette), Matt Haimovitz and Uccello’s Meeting of the Spirits gets a surround-sound makeover for the PENTATONE Oxingale series. Featuring jazz milestones re-imagined for a big band of cellos, arranged by composer David Sanford, the 2010 Grammy-nominated album was hailed by All About Jazz as “a captivating recording from start to finish … Haimovitz and Sanford have created a work of great beauty.” The cellos wail, slide, and swing in an all-new big band sound – joined by dazzling musical contributions from guitar legend John McLaughlin, percussionist Matt Wilson and Jan Jarczyk on keyboards – in works by Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu), Miles Davis, Billy Strayhorn and other jazz greats. NPR says, “This agile band of players, led by such a free spirit, makes almost everything sound fresh.”

This album is violinist Arabella Steinbacher’s tribute to the favorite composer of her family household. The music of Richard Strauss has played a crucial role throughout her life. As great Strauss lovers, her parents named her after the main character of Strauss’ opera Arabella, and the family house was filled with Strauss melodies, often sung live by famous singers accompanied by Steinbacher’s father, who was a solo-répétiteur at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The album starts with a piece that Strauss originally conceived for violin and orchestra, the rarely-performed Violin Concerto in D minor, composed when he was still a teenager. Two other early instrumental works – the Romanze (usually performed by cello and orchestra) and Scherzino (an arrangement of an early piano piece) – are also featured on this album. The rest of the repertoire consists of famous Strauss songs (Zueignung, Wiegenlied, Traum durch die Dämmerung, Cäcilie), “sung” on Steinbacher’s violin. The apotheosis of this highly personal programme is Steinbacher’s rendition of “Aber der Richtige…”, the celestial duet from Arabella. Arabella Steinbacher, a multiple award-winner with an extensive PENTATONE discography, is accompanied by the WDR Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lawrence Foster.

Sensuous, lushly evocative and intricately constructed, Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé is widely regarded as his greatest orchestral masterpiece and one of the 20th century’s finest ballet scores. This vast musical fresco with its shimmering harmonies, magical diaphanous textures and spectacular conclusion is compellingly realised by Gustavo Gimeno and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg in this eagerly awaited release from PENTATONE. The album also contains the haunting and exquisite Pavane pour une infante défunte and the vividly scored Une barque sur l'océan. Stravinsky regarded Daphnis et Chloé as “not only Ravel’s best work, but also one of the most beautiful products of French music” and it’s easy to see why. Written with consummate finesse for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, this “choreographic symphony” is an intoxicating blend of warm, seductive harmonies and passionate intensity, realised on a large orchestral canvas. Three movements have become perennially popular: the luxuriant Lever du jour, the enchanting Pantomine and the raucous Danse générale (Bacchanale) which Ravel incorporated in the later Daphnis and Chloé Suite No. 2. Elsewhere, Ravel displays the same deftness of touch with the much-loved Pavane pour une infante défunte and Une barque sur l'océan, both masterly orchestrations of his charming piano miniatures. “Gimeno cultivates … a bright, transparent orchestral sound free of dull pathos and also rediscovers colours in this score,” wrote the Trierischer Volksfreund in 2014. “[...] Wonderful! This conductor is a discovery!” This is Gustavo Gimeno’s third recording with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg (OPL) for PENTATONE following two releases in May 2017 of orchestral works by Bruckner and Shostakovich. A further six projects are planned in the coming years. “We’re very excited to make this multi-album collaboration with PENTATONE part of the artistic journey of the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and Gustavo Gimeno,” writes Matthew Studdert-Kennedy, Head of Artistic Planning at the OPL. “Having the opportunity to commit to a series of recordings of music by a broad range of composers is hugely rewarding for all involved … We believe that the albums ahead of us have a great deal to offer.”

The acclaimed Russian-born maestro Vladimir Jurowski kicks off his new cycle of the complete symphonies of Prokofiev for PENTATONE with a searing account of the challenging and uncompromising second and third symphonies. Forged out of “iron and steel”, the rarely-performed Symphony No. 2 uses strident fanfares, martial rhythms and clashing dissonances to create great walls of sound to represent the inexorable march of the machine age. It’s a deliberately modernist work, written while the composer was in Paris in the 1920s and intent on provoking audiences. The stark first movement is balanced by the second movement which is in the form of six disparate variations. Containing more subdued and lyrical moments, these variations build towards a relentless march, culminating in a series of hammer blows from the orchestra to end the work with a ghostly calm. The Symphony No. 3 recycles material from his opera The Fiery Angel to great dramatic and terrifying effect. It’s an angry, defiant and complex work which contains a lyrical slow movement, a dazzling third movement in the form of a devilish scherzo and an almost unhinged final movement which starts as a sinister march and builds to an apocalyptic climax of alarming power. Vladimir Jurowski has recorded extensively for PENTATONE and has received enthusiastic critical acclaim. In July 2017, he signed a long-term, multi-album agreement with PENTATONE which includes a new complete cycle of the symphonies of Sergei Prokofiev with his State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia “Evgeny Svetlanov”.

This double album offers a testimony to Stravinsky’s overwhelming musical heritage, covering all the phases of his creative life. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) is twentieth-century music! More than any other composer, he continued to develop his compositional style throughout his seven-decade-spanning career, innovating and adopting all the most important musical trends of his century. Historically, the musical journey starts with one of the first recordings of the recently rediscovered Funeral Song (1909), composed as a tribute to his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov. The next phase in his development is represented with the raw but tremendously refined Rite of Spring (1913), Stravinsky’s most famous work that created a scandal at its Paris world premiere, and immediately turned him into a star. His Neoclassical style is showcased by Jeu de cartes (1937) and the Concerto in D (1947), whereas Agon (1957) presents Stravinsky’s original take on Schoenberg’s serialism. This multifarious repertoire is performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and their Music Director Gustavo Gimeno, who continue their acclaimed PENTATONE series of composer portraits that already featured monographs of Shostakovich, Bruckner, Ravel and Mahler.

Gustavo Gimeno conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg in a fascinating survey of confident, assured and striking orchestral works by the young Shostakovich. This new recording from Pentatone includes his breathtaking Symphony No. 1 Op. 10 - the student work which brought Shostakovich international fame. While indebted to the Russian masters, Shostakovich's early works nevertheless demonstrate his precocious brilliance, originality and falir and they offer an intriguing glimpse at the evolution of his distinctive, mature style. From the easy going and good humored Scherzo Op. 1, the Tchaikovskian Theme and Variations in B-flat major Op. 3, or the Stravinskyan Scherzo Op. 7, his youthful vitality is never in doubt. But with his Symphony No 1 Op. 10 he produced his first masterpiece and found his own distinctive voice. It's a thrilling work full of sardonic edginess, pained introspection and dramatic outbursts, and closes with a barnstorming finale. Composed 10 years later, the aptly titled Five Fragments for orchestra Op. 42 are short, pungent and austere pieces; the arresting style is modernist but the sound is unmistakeably Shostakovich. Following his acclaimed conducting debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2014, Gustavo Gimeno took up the post of Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg with the 2015-2016 season. An auspicious collaboration with Pentatone followed in 2016 and three releases with the orchestra are planned in 2017. "His musical rhetorics are refined, his grip on the structure of the compositions is accurate and convincint" observed Joep Stapel in the NRC Handelsblad, "Gimeno knew how to keep the tension and made the musicians...excel." Elsewhere in a busy international schedule, Gimeno has debuted with major orchestras in Europe and America, and toured with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra to Taiwan and Japan.

SUITE FROM PELLEAS ET MELISSAN

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

It takes an impressive performance for Elgar to come alive for me, as he does in this recording by Edo de Waart and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, both subtle and fiery. The First Symphony, in particular, burns under a surface sheen, and “The Dream of Gerontius” is intensely played and firmly sung.

– New York Times

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

"PentaTone has done it again. It's another splendid SACD reissue in Direct Stream Digital of a quadro recording from the 70's. Eliahu Inbal - to my mind, a much-underrated conductor - leads the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra in persuasive accounts of Camille Saint-Saëns' Symphonies No. 1 & 2, under-recorded works that deserve a hearing."

--Dr Phil Muse, Atlanta Audio Society

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Tchaikovsky has dedicated some of his finest music to the violin, but this new album expands the instrument’s repertoire even further. Inspired by greats such as Sarasate, Heifetz, Kreisler and Joachim, violinist Guy Braunstein reanimates a tradition of violin and orchestra rhapsodies with new arrangements of famous excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Swan Lake. Together with the extraordinary Violin Concerto, Valse Scherzo and Sérénade mélancolique, they constitute a collection of glittering Tchaikovsky Treasures. On this first PENTATONE album, Braunstein plays with the renowned BBC Symphony Orchestra, led by maestro Kirill Karabits. Violinist Guy Braunstein was born in Tel Aviv and studied under the guidance of Chaim Taub and later in New York with Glenn Dicterow and Pinchas Zuckerman. He started performing as an international soloist and a chamber musician at a young age and has since performed with many of the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors. His chamber music collaborations have included projects with Issac Stern, András Schiff, Zubin Mehta, Maurizio Pollini, Yefim Bronfman, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Mitsuko Uchida and Angelika Kirschlager to name a few. He was the youngest person ever to be appointed concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2000, a position he held for twelve years before leaving to pursue his solo career.

Lisa Delan and Luna Pearl Woolf write of their new release: “We were dreaming of lullabies. Each of us, unbeknown to the other, imagined creating the kind of recording we wanted to hear as we tucked our children in at night. Meeting in this shared land, our commingled dreams sowed the seeds of Angel Heart. Buds broke through in the farm of songs that we gathered from disparate corners of the world, with vastly differing musical languages. Delighted with the landscape, what, we wondered, would it look like in full bloom? When we laid our seedlings at the feet of Cornelia Funke, the flowering began. Her words took root around the songs to form a single story: a tale told by voices in speech and in song, suspended above a rich bed of cellos. Bringing pictures in to play, our nursery blossomed with contrast and color. Come, lay a blanket down among the stalks and petals and experience Angel Heart through music, story, sight, and touch. Join us!”

Marc Albrecht conducts the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra with the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Alice Coote in a persuasive new recording of Mahler’s incomparable orchestral song cycles Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Kindertotenlieder and the Rückert-Lieder. Richly lyrical, poignant and soul searching, Mahler’s orchestral songs deal with the familiar themes of love, life, resignation and loss, exquisitely realised on an orchestral canvas which combines haunting and compelling sonorities with strident, unsettling dissonances. While not as ambitious as his symphonies, they are as deeply-felt and often regarded as the key to the larger-scale works. The eloquent sadness of the Kindertotenlieder is expressed though the rather bare orchestration and the entrancing use of solo instruments, culminating in a blissfully serene conclusion. With Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, the restless mood swings are matched with fluctuating, vividly textured orchestral colours. And for the most lyrical song cycle, the Rückert-Lieder, the delicately woven orchestral textures are ravishing in their effect, especially in the incomparable Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, a song of which Mahler said “It is truly me”. “What makes Albrecht’s Mahler so unique? His approach has integrity, is intelligent and sensitive … Albrecht leads the Mahler that makes you love Mahler.” (NRC Handelsblad). Marc Albrecht is Music Director of the Netherlands Philharmonic, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and the Dutch National Opera. Acclaimed for his interpretations of Wagner, Strauss and Mahler, as well as for his commitment to contemporary music, Albrecht is a regular guest at Europe’s most prestigious opera houses and orchestras. The world renowned mezzo-soprano Alice Coote is acclaimed for her performances of Strauss, Mahler, Berlioz, Mozart, Handel and Bach; she performs throughout the UK, Europe and the US and has a busy recital schedule. The Guardian noted “Alice Coote's many admirers will be grateful to have her performance in Mahler’s great song-symphony documented in a carefully made studio recording [for PENTATONE], for she has emerged over the past few years as one of the finest mezzo interpreters of Das Lied von der Erde around … exquisitely coloured; every word matters, and the sadness that pervades the mezzo songs in particular is conveyed without it ever becoming self-conscious or sentimental.”

Graceful, refined, and irresistibly charming, the Flute Quartets occupy an exquisite place in Mozart’s incomparable chamber music. This light, airy music with its vivid contrasts, delicious textures and irrepressible wit is brought to life by the soloists of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin in this new release from PENTATONE. Mozart may have disparaged the flute as an instrument but he shows no signs of weariness in these exemplary works which positively overflow with youthful optimism. The young unemployed Mozart wrote three of the flute quartets following a commission from the Dutch amateur flautist Ferdinand Dejean in Mannheim. Around the same time he also started work on his famous Concerto for Flute and Harp. The Flute Quartet in D K285 is a breezy affair written in concertante style which brims with attractive melodies. Its sublimely affecting slow movement was described by the biographer Alfred Einstein as “perhaps the most beautiful accompanied flute solo that has even been written”. The simple, unhurried Flute Quartet in G K285A contains a delightful interplay of instruments, while the Flute Quartet in C K285B has a charming theme and variations with a spirited finale. The playful Flute Quartet in A K298 is a later work perhaps written for a group of friends; it contains borrowings from other composers artfully woven into the engaging and witty score. The result is, of course, utterly winning. Ulf-Dieter Schaaff is the principal flautist with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, a position he combines with a career as a soloist and as an internationally sought-after teacher. He is joined by his colleagues Philipp Beckert (violin), Andreas Willwohl (viola) and Georg Boge (violoncello). In their first recording for PENTATONE, they chose an unconventional seating arrangement (with violin and flute on the outer flanks) in order to create a novel spatial effect in the music. They play these quartets not as a “Concerto for Flute and String Trio” but as chamber music written for equal partners.