This disc demonstrates the principle that if you dress up a perfectly ordinary individual in fine style, the results can be impressive. Louis Massonneau, despite the French name, worked at several German courts during the very last stages of the system of aristocratic patronage in the early nineteenth century. He was a virtuoso violinist and apparently a skilled oboist, as well, for the three quartets for oboe and strings included here are beautifully written for the instrument. They are three-movement works that look back to Mozart, and they're attractive but harmless. Gussied up in well-recorded SACD sound, wrapped in liner notes that make the most ordinary events of common sonata and rondo forms sound like something special, and very smoothly executed by Germany's
Ensemble Più, you can easily forget that there's not really much going on here. Oboists, audiophiles, and those with large collections of chamber music will gravitate toward this disc, but those generally interested in distinctive proto-Romantic chamber music for winds might check out instead the Helios-label reissue of two Hummel septets, performed by the ensemble Capricorn.