Everything about this disc is charming, right from the clever cover art that wittily illustrates the “wind” aspect of these concertos. Flutist Mathieu Dufour and oboist Alex Klein, current (Dufour) and former (Klein) Chicago Symphony principals, team up for a nicely varied program of 18th and 19th century works for either or both of their instruments. Cimarosa (1749-1801) is only known today for his opera Il matrimonio segreto, which enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame at the same time that Mozart was trying to make his name in the Viennese operatic world. As a composer of instrumental music he’s a closed book, but this very fluent and amiable concerto has many of the same qualities as the opera: an attractive fund of melody and a good sense of timing. Originally written for two flutes, it’s performed here arranged for flute and oboe, a wonderful idea as the timbral contrast helps keep things perky–and few sounds in music are more annoying over the long term than two flutes.
Wilhelm Bernhard Molique (1802-1869) was a German composer and follower of Spohr who spent a good part of his career in London. With that pedigree, you aren’t going to find anything radical in either the Flute Concerto or the Concertino, but they are expertly crafted, and the minor-key tonality in both works lends them an extra degree of melodic and harmonic interest. The playing of both Dufour and Klein, as might be expected of two world-class musicians, is completely disarming in its technical facility. Dufour’s tone both here and in the Moscheles Concertino has a touch of fuzz in its high register and a slightly hollow quality in low-lying passages, but Klein is superb throughout, as he was on his disc of modern oboe concertos for this same label. This may be a function of the recording acoustic, which captures the orchestra (enthusiastically conducted by Paul Freeman) very vividly and balances the soloists quite naturally, but it seems just a bit too ample for such basically light and intimate music. A small reservation, then, about a disc that in all significant respects is well planned in terms of repertoire and delightfully fresh in its execution.
