Gürzenich FagottQuintett - Fagottissima quarta (2009)

If you're after an extremely lightweight album of music for multiple bassoons, there's no question that this one will deliver. The Gürzenich Bassoon Quintet, backed by an assortment of added musicians and singers, delivers a program of arrangements, along with a few pieces originally conceived for bassoon trio or quartet. Those modest efforts by French composer Désiré Louis Corneille Dondeyne, born in 1921, are successful in raising a smile, and the arrangements of familiar pieces by Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and Jacob Gade (Tango Jalousie) are pleasant. The humorous items, despite the promising track 1 title Eine kleine Lachmusik (A Little Laugh Music), don't quite come off; lead bassoonist and arranger Rainer Schottstädt relies on the same joke (morphing a classical piece into a famous popular tune) multiple times. The program is billed as a set of "virtuoso rarities." But in part of the program the bassoons play only an accompanimental role in works such as the Cat Duet (with the text, in full, "Meow"), billed here as being by Gioacchino Rossini even though it was deauthenticated years ago. Still, the low end of the contrabassoon gets some funny lines in Schottstädt's arrangements, the engineering is fine as usual with MDG, and the sound of mass bassoons can't help but raise a smile at times.