Boccherini – Chamber works for flute CD

Chamber Works for Flute
Sally Walker
AVIE AV2698, 2024
Review by Graham Strahle
A clan of wonderful Adelaide musicians have gathered for this double CD of Boccherini flute
quintets. Just look at them: violinists Elizabeth Layton and Alison Rayner, violist Stephen
King, cellist Thomas Marlin, double bassist Robert Nairn, oboist Celia Craig, bassoonist Mark
Gaydon, and French hornist Sarah Barrett. They are all among our very best, suffice to say.
No doubt though, one name will be unfamiliar to many, and that is the ‘star of the show’,
flautist Sally Walker.
Hailing from Canberra, she was the thinking and energy behind this project,
which is to record a sizeable collection of Boccherini’s quintets for flute and strings.
Principally, we have his Sei Quintetti Op.19 of 1774, and vivaciously tuneful pieces they are
too. Yes, this is the same Boccherini who gave us that famous, cheery minuet in his String
Quintet in E (Op.11, No.5), and this music likewise brims with melody. A second disc gives us
selections from the equally wonderful Sei Nottorni Op.38 and Quintetto G.443.
This is, above all, sociable music, and the key to getting it right is a spirit of geniality.
Boccherini happily stays within the confines of established chamber music norms of the
time, and does so with charm, but he always offers something a bit adventurous and
different. Just when things are sailing along smoothly, he will throw in a completely odd
idea just to surprise and delight the listener.
A good instance of this happens in Quintetto terzo from Op.19. After a serene opening of
noble beauty, the flute and viola scamper after each other in alternating flurries of scales.
The idea seems to be to hold an elegantly poise while tossing off these scales with a sense
of cheeky fun. You can almost see Boccherini smirking. Walker dispatches her scales with
grace and catch-me-if-you-can alacrity, but for the Cello they go up high and awkwardly.
Marlin rises to the occasion with courage, like it is a tough workout at the gym.
The same happens in the Quintetto quarto, this time with cello in the spotlight, and similarly
having to navigate up high on its top string. Thomas Marlin gets the job done very finely too,
and the funny part is how the rest of the ensemble carries on as if nothing has happened.
Let’s remember Boccherini was one of the foremost cellists of his day and had technique
aplenty: he really enjoys handing out a tough assignment and forcing the left hand to fly up
and down the fingerboard.
What particularly impresses is these musicians’ enlivened, sparky approach. Some are schooled in Baroque practice while others are not; but that does not matter:
most are ASO players who have experience in historical performance and know how to
shape a phrase in eighteenth-century manner. They also know how to maintain an

exceptionally tight ensemble. No single voice sticks out – unless Boccherini deliberately
makes it so.
Walker’s playing is to be savoured: it is soft-toned, exquisitely judged in phrasing, and very
natural stylistically. Her career biography is too long to recite here, but she has appeared
with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, along with numerous overseas orchestras. In the
early music field, she has performed with Salut! Baroque and the Australian Romantic &
Classical Orchestra, and here she is using what looks from the front cover to be a gorgeous
wooden flute: indeed, it is a Verne Q. Powell custom-made instrument of modern design
carved from Grenadilla.
One imagines this music was played in exactly the kind of surroundings in which this CD was
recorded. North Adelaide Baroque Hall, as many music-lovers have now discovered, is
essentially a replica, both in dimensions and décor, of typical chamber rooms from around
1720, where social gatherings and music-making like this would have taken place. You’ll
notice that the CD’s sound is not as resonant or full as the Baroque Hall is in real life, but as
far as a recording goes, this may be a good thing: they’ve managed to keep sound energy
from becoming excessive while conveying a believable sense of real acoustical space.
The label is AVIE from the UK. With other artists in its portfolio such as Trevor Pinnock,
Monica Huggett and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, this release finds Walker
and friends in good company.
The delights just keep coming in this rather special album.
Sally Walker and Friends perform ‘Music Fit for a King’, with music by Mozart and
Boccherini, to celebrate this album’s release on 26 September, at 7 pm, North Adelaide
Baroque Hall