Grundmann-Quartett - Georg Druschetzky: Oboe Quartets, Vol. 1

Georg Druschetzky is a name that people who know their music history associate with charming but innocuous wind partitas and truly out-of-the-ordinary concertos for six, seven, or eight timpani and orchestra. The latter category comes as no surprise; after all, Druschetzky was an �Upper Austrian Regional Timpanist� and so why shouldn�t he offer compositional tribute to his instrument? But there�s more: Druschetzky enjoyed a successful career that took him all the way to the court of the Palatine of Hungary, Archduke Joseph von Habsburg, in Ofen (today�s Buda), where he held the posts of court composer and music director and wrote masses, symphonies, two operas, and numerous chamber compositions. His chamber works include a cycle of ten oboe quartets (1807-8) from his late years that make an astonishing and lasting listening impression � because of his rich imagination and his compositional wit and spirited harmonic daredevilry that we otherwise encounter only in the �surprise artist� Haydn. This discovery is so significant that we in any case intend to present all ten quartets in congenial recordings by the Grundmann Quartet on historical instruments.