Quartet Sonata No.1 in G major

Rossini’s six Sonate a Quattro were written in 1804 when the twelve-year-old composer was staying in the country house of Agostino Triossi, landowner, merchant and double-bass player - which explains the original, slightly eccentric instrumentation for two violins, cello and double bass and the prominent role regularly awarded to the last of them. First published in an arrangement for regular string quartet in Milan in 1825, they have long been a source of amusement for the engaging tunefulness of the outer movements, the innocent sentiment of the central slow movements and their precociously ingenious scoring - even in arrangements for other instruments, like this wind-quartet version in F of Sonata No.1 in G.