Ignaz Joseph Pleyel, known mostly as an early piano manufacturer, was also Haydn's student, and briefly his rival in a musical competition trumped up during Haydn's visit to London in 1792. Most of the recordings of Pleyel's music that have appeared thus far merely confirm why the Londoners continued to play Haydn and forgot Pleyel, but these wind pieces, counterparts to Mozart's large wind serenades, are different. The parallel is indeed to Mozart rather than to Pleyel's teacher: the works are four-movement pieces with the dimensions and movement sequences (the slow movements tend to be Romances or romance-like) of string quartets, not true divertimenti or serenades. In fact, with two octets and two sextets represented here, the textures are more complex than those of Mozart's wind serenades even if Pleyel has nothing as emotionally compelling as Mozart's Serenade for winds in C minor, K. 388. These four pieces are full of delights from beginning to end. Sample the finale of the Octet in B flat major, track 4, with its seeming destabilization of the key in its B strain, expertly resolved through an ingenious expansion of the original material. In the Sextet in E flat major the MDG label's always superb engineering helps create very unusual effects: Pleyel writes intricate horn parts, especially in the opening movement, that would seem likely to overwhelm the rest of the instruments in a conventional performance -- but MDG, working in an old riding track in the town of Bad Arolsen, delivers a compelling replica of outdoor performance. The horn writing is assured throughout; wind players of all stripes ought to get to know these works, and Dieter Klöcker's Consortium Classicum, which has specialized in neglected wind music of the Classical era, has never seemed more sprightly and relaxed. Pleyel was clearly in his element here, and there isn't a weak moment in the music. Put it on for friends who love the sound of Viennese Classicism and watch them try to guess who could have written this thoroughly enjoyable stuff.
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