At first a cellist in the Mannheim court orchestra, later Vice Kapellmeister to the Munich court, Franz Danzi (1763-1826) spent his whole life writing nicely decorative music, displaying obvious qualities of craftsmanship and melodic imagination. His Wind Quintets Op. 67 were composed around the same time as Beethoven’s late string quartets. Naturally, the gulf between the two bodies of works is huge. Danzi aims not to sound the depths of the human soul, but to please the ear. And he’s very successful at it. Reminiscent of Mozart in places (Minuetto of the Quintet in E minor) and sometimes spiced up with some witty chromaticisms, the three Quintets presented here are full of charm, never banal or boring, and always written in the most idiomatic way for the medium. Each instrument is treated as an equal and given plenty of opportunities to show off, and the wonderful musicians united around the horn of Michael Thompson sure don’t miss a trick. Their ensemble playing is of the highest precision, as colorful and vivacious as one could hope. More ambitious, the early Horn Sonata Op. 28 (1804) is a perfect foil for Thompson’s finesse and musicality, seconded with elegance by the pianist Philip Fowke. Naxos provides a very pleasant-sounding recording, closed-miked but nevertheless faithful to the timbres of the instruments in the Quintets, more ethereal and distant in the Sonata.
