Onslow: Piano Quintet, Op. 79bis & Piano Sextet, Op. 30

Chronique

The son of expatriot English Lord Edward Onslow and noble French woman Marie-Rosalie de Boudeilles of the Brantôme family, the prize pupil of Bohemian composer Antoine Reicha, and the director of the Académie des Beaux-Arts -- and thus the highest official representative of instrumental music in France -- George Onslow (1784-1863) was nearly completely forgotten shortly after his death and remains barely remembered today. This superbly performed and superlatively recorded disc of Onslow's Sextet in E flat major from 1825 and his Quintet in B flat major from 1849 hardly scratches the surface of his prolific chamber music output. Both works here do have their distinctive charms. Scored for piano and string quartet plus bass and dedicated to Onslow's friend and fellow composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel, the sextet's Minuetto has a bouncy rhythm and its Andante con variazioni has a catchy tune. An arrangement for piano and string trio plus bass of his Sextet for piano and wind quintet plus bass, the quintet's opening Allegro moderato has a cogent development and its closing Allegretto has an ingratiating melody. And if neither work attains the heights and depths of Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn's chamber music, it's neither the fault of the Ensemble Concertant Frankfurt nor Gianluca Luisi -- the members of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and the young Italian pianist play with energy, enthusiasm, and a great deal of affection -- nor the fault of the Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm -- the German label celebrated for its amazingly realistic and astonishingly vivid sound turn in another astoundingly impressive recording. While this disc may entertain and amuse listeners steeped in nineteenth century chamber music, it remains to be seen how much deeper into Onslow's oeuvre they'll want to go.
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