Mozart, Winter, Hummel & Rossini: Bassoon Concertos

Album review

The material on this release by Finnish bassoonist Jaakko Luoma with the marvelous Tapiola Sinfonietta under Janne Nisonen may seem obscure enough to be aimed at bassoonists only. They will certainly find a valuable repertory here, but the album is of considerably wider interest. The only remotely familiar work is the Bassoon Concerto in B flat major, K. 191, by the young Mozart, an elegant work in the French style that receives a suitably bittersweet performance. The program opens with Hummel's Bassoon Concerto in F major, WoO 23, never published and rarely played since it was first composed. It shows Hummel in an unusually Mozartian mode, revealing its authorship mostly in the expansive first movement. The second half of the program contains the real find. Peter von Winter's single-movement Bassoon Concertino is an attractive, pleasingly operatic work by this Mannheim composer who, among other things, once wrote a sequel to The Magic Flute. The Bassoon Concerto of 1845 here, credited to Rossini, is of uncertain authorship, but it doesn't matter who wrote it: it's a virtuoso showpiece of the first order, and Luoma's clean rendering is worth the price of admission. Ondine gets fine sonic results from the acoustically superb Tapiola Concert Hall. Highly recommended.
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