SCO Winds - Beethoven: Music for Winds - Financial Times

It must have been a joy to attend an aristocratic dinner party in the late 18th century, when guests would have been entertained by bubblingly effervescent music from the host’s resident wind band. We may not associate Beethoven with this kind of background music, but he left a few delightful works from his early years. The Sextet and Octet are both congenial and highly skilled (Haydn sent the latter as one of a group of pieces to a patron noting that they showed “Beethoven will in time become one of the greatest musical artists in Europe”). The wind soloists of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra make a lovely job of them and throw in a handful of pleasing miniatures to fill the disc.