DAVID FONTANESI (b.1969): Concerto for Flute, Oboe and String Orchestra, Concerto for Flute, Bassoon and String Orchestra, Piccola Suite for String Orchestra, Schizzi Sinfonici for Orchestra, Hymnus for Orchestra.

Description: The two ten-minute concertos are in four-movement baroque slow-fast-slow-fast form and, like the Suite and Hymnus, are in a neo-romantic style which evokes (for me at least) a group of expensively-dressed aristocratic people sitting on an Alpine greensward near a deep blue lake at sunset in midsummer, sipping prosecco while nightingales begin to serenade them. The 15-minute “Symphonic Sketches”, on the other hand, could almost be a demonstration of how attractive dissonance and atonality can be when applied to late romantic-style music redolent of the heady period of Berg and early Schoenberg. Ginevra Petrucci (flute), Luca Vignali (oboe), Paolo Carlini (bassoon), I Virtuosi Italiani; Kasper de Roo.