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The music Boxwood & Brass plays was therefore created by players who knew the instruments they were writing for
intimately, which is why it makes so much sense to use historical instruments. We love the sound they make, but also what
they bring to the music. For instance, when a piece in (concert) E flat major modulates to A flat major, the Harmoniemusik
composer knew that the particular combination of open and closed tones of the natural horn in E flat and the large proportion
of forked fingerings required on the bassoon would produce a very particular colour, atmosphere and most importantly
character, quite different from the generally ‘open’ sound of the home key.

e usually focus on music for the wonderfully versatile
and intimate six-part ensemble of clarinets, horns and
Wbassoons, which actually makes up to the largest proportion
Boxwood & Brass’s debut of surviving repertoire, but in February 2017 we are scaling the
Mount Everest of harmoniemusik: Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
CD, Music for a Prussian From around 1810 the Viennese publisher Steiner published a
Salon, featuring the music series of virtuosic arrangements of popular works, often by his in-

of Johann Stamitz, Franz house composers. The most famous of these was Beethoven, whose
Seventh Symphony and Sonata Pathetique were issued in anonymous
Tausch, Bernhard Henrik
arrangements that surely must have had the composer’s approval, if
Crusell, and Heinrich not his input. The symphony arrangement was actually advertised at
Baermann is available the same time and with the same prominence as the ‘real’ version for
orchestra, a mark of the high status that harmoniemusik held. Unlike
from Resonus Classics at:
other Beethoven arrangements, this one survives probably in a single
copy, maybe a sign that it was a bit too ambitious, even at the height of
www.resonusclassics.com the Harmoniemusik rage!

We’re coupling the symphony with another of Steiner’s publications,
the overture to Boieldieu’s Jean de Paris, which was so popular in early-
19th-century Vienna that it was made into over a dozen arrangements
for Harmonie. We’re also playing an exceptional original partita by
Triebensee, who played chamber music with Beethoven. Through
these concerts, we want to give people a different view of the musical
world of Beethoven’s Vienna, and the hugely important role that
Harmoniemusik played in it.

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