The Soloist of Concert Spirituel - Boismortier: Six Concertos for Five Flutes, Op. 15 (1997)

Five solo flutes is not a sound you hear every day, and when those -flutes are mellow-toned baroquestyle instruments, all copies of a single Flemish model dating from the 1720s, then you really do have something to make you sit up and take notice. Boismortier may have written over 100 opus numbers, but only one of them was devoted to this unusual instrumental combination, and we may speculate that whatever it was that inspired him to such innovation (even if it was mainly commercial gain) was also enough to prevent him from falling victim to the facility for which he was, and stilt is, so often criticized. And in any case in Op. 15, published in 1727, he was a man with a mission. These were the first works by a Frenchman to carry the Italian appellation 'concerto', and indeed their style, though French in its surface details, clearly derives from the Vivaldian style of ritornello concerto.

The soloists of Le Concert Spirituel are fine interpreters of this music, with a polished sense of style and, for the most part, a commendable uniformity of intonation and ensemble (the unison passages are particularly remarkable in this respect). As usual with recordings ofcomplete opus numbers, you probably would not want to listen to this one from beginning to end; but this is pleasantly melodious music and, linked as it is to a strange and beautiful sound, it is certainly enough of a curiosity to deserve a hearing.