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DISCOGRAPHY
Music for wind ensemble was a regular part of entertainment in Beethoven’s day, and his Octet was composed for the skilled players in the service of his patron, the Archbishop-Elector in Bonn. The charming and skilfully written Sextet is also ‘from my early things and, what’s more, was written in one night’; impressing a critic of the time ‘by its splendid melodies, leisurely harmonic flow, and wealth of new and surprising ideas’. Wind partitas often opened with a March, and the Rondino was originally intended as the Finale to the Octet, two suitable pieces to complete this fashionable Beethoven soirée.
1. March in B - Flat Major, WoO 29
2. Octet in E-Flat Major, Op. 103
3. Sextet in E-Flat Major, Op. 71
4. Rondino in E-Flat Major, WoO 25