Ries: Flute Quartets Op 145

A pupil of Beethoven in Vienna, Ferdinand Ries enjoyed a successful career as a performer and as a composer. After a period in England, he finally retired to his native Rhineland where he wrote his Flute Quartets. Written in an early Romantic style, the Quartets are notable for their diversity, the first with a Spanish finale, the second more sombre in tone, and the third providing a bright conclusion, as though it were designed to cap an evening of music-making. Quotations or near quotations from works by other composers of the period give the Quartets a humorous and unusual unpredictability.

"The three Flute Quartets on this disc are a product of Ries's retirement years, and show themselves to be completely mature masterworks of the highest order. They will remind you of Beethoven, yet there is something about them that Ries makes his own. At the same time the evident mastery of form and marvelous inventiveness of melody and structure belong to a composer of the most consummate abilities.…If you don't know Ries you should certainly try him out one way or another." AudophileAudition