Gramophone review: Wind music by Kvandal/ Mozart

– Johan Kvandal is a Norwegian composer who writes with an evident respect for Mozart’s approach to the wind ensemble: This alone makes the coupling a good one.

His idiom is neo-classical, his harmonic style only occasionally going beyond a fairly straight- forward, cromatically inflected diatonicism. There are some jolly hunting sounds in the Scherzo of the second nonet, and a suitably nocturnal texture and harmonic density in the succeeding Adagio. A bracing piece, the Gramphone writes.

Nonets for eight wind instruments and double bass nr. 1 op. 54 and nr. 2 op. 57. Wind Serenade in C Minor K388/ K384a1. The Norwegian Wind Ensemble. Simax/ Conifer PSC1 037.

(excerpt)

Review in Gramophone, July, 1989