Calefax Reed Quintet - Romantic Kaleidoscope (2015) [HDTracks]

In the first fifteen years of its existence, Calefax performed just two works from the Romantic period: the brief and motoric, and as such rather un-Romantic Miniature Overture from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, and a suite of Franz Liszt’s late piano works. The latter typifies Calefax’s somewhat troubled relationship with Romanticism. While Liszt’s extremely sober late piano works are indeed rooted in the Romantic era, they were unmistakenly ahead of their time, pointing to the twentieth-century quest for a way out of tonality’s stranglehold.