Canadian bassist David Sinclair's new CD is an outstanding release, musically, technically and historically. Featuring three concertos from the second half of the eighteenth century, it is the first recording of the Hofmeister Concerto and first recording of the Vanhal on Viennese violine (Lars Baunkilde recorded the Pichl on Viennese violine in 1997). It is superbly recorded in Super Audio (surely the first solo bass CD in this format) on Annette Schumacher's wonderful Ars Produktion label. The balance has been carefully considered in every movement and the accompaniment from fellow bassist and conductor Michael Willens directing the Cologne-based ensemble Kölner Akademie is sensitive and supportive.

Bamert’s lively direction and the highly professional playing of the London Mozart Players provide Herschel with the best imaginable advocacy, and we may be grateful to Chandos for giving us the chance to hear his music.

Music publisher, friend, benefactor to Mozart, and respected composer Franz Anton Hoffmeister was a significant figure in late eighteenth century Vienna; his star did not fade until well into the nineteenth century, when he was eventually disparaged as a mediocrity. Yet Hoffmeister could have no better advocates than violist Ashan Pillai and conductor Christopher Hogwood, who have restored some of this composer's reputation in a delightful album of his complete works for viola. Pillai's idiomatic and sensitive solos and Hogwood's fastidious direction of the Gulbenkian Orchestra elevate the music to a high level of elegance and charm, and it becomes apparent from these performances that Hoffmeister was much better than his detractors claimed.

This collection of ten Classical symphonies concertantes was recorded (quadraphonically!) in 1977 and issued as a five-record set by EMI Electrola. Now it has been licensed by CPO and reissued economically on just three CDs.

Franz Anton Hoffmeister was a formative figure in the musical life of his time and highly regarded as a publisher of famous contemporaries such as Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. The variety and appeal of his own works also made him a popular and renowned composer. As with volume 1 of this series (8572738), flautist Bruno Meier has created new editions of these previously unknown works. With elegant and catchy themes, substantial proportions, intriguing major/minor contrasts of key and virtuoso solo writing, Hoffmeister satisfied the tastes of his time finding a perfect balance between grace and artistry.

These "double bass quartets" of Franz Anton Hoffmeister, a Viennese composer and publisher well known to both Mozart and Beethoven, are not written simply for one member each of the string family from violin to double bass; the bass is explicitly conceived of as a replacement for the first violin. That might seem an awkward order, but the charm of the music resides in the variety of elegant solutions Hoffmeister finds for the problems this configuration causes.