Description on Youtube:
Roberto Gerhard, born in Tarragona in 1896, was a pupil of Felipe Pedrell, and has never lost (or despised) his gift for that picturesque style which stresses Spanish folk characteristics. But his works can preserve a subtle national flavor even when employing the more sophisticated technical resources he acquired during his study with Schönberg in 1925-28. Thus the Wind Quintet, written at the end of that period and four years after Schönbergs weighty essay in the medium, opens with a bassoon phrase that has the nonchalant rhythm of a folksong yet also establishes a seven-note row that is of crucial (though not, as in Schönberg, exclusive) importance throughout the first two movements. In the first, set against its inversion (oboe and clarinet, after the reiterated tutti chords), it also forms the second subject of a sonata scheme, but in the Andante (aba;c;aba;coda) it is constantly played off against its images in contrapuntal textures of extreme lucidity. The new theme (flute) of the Allegro giocoso, though also subject to quasi-serial transformations, demands a more harmonic accompaniment, while the trio, with an evocative echo of Spanish folk-song (oboe), finally transplants this serenade from Schönbergian territory. In the scherzoso finale, the refrain (oboe) and horn-call accompaniment piquantly dispute, rather than deny, tonalities; the central episode and the presto coda explore, with contrasted results, the conjunction of the refrain shape with the two rows of the earlier movements.
The members of The London Wind Quintet were Gwydion Brooke (bassoon), Alan Civil (horn), Gareth Morris (flute), Sidney Sutcliffe (oboe), and Bernard Walton (clarinet).
