Five virtuosos, one stage: New York Woodwind Quintet creates a tunefulindulgence

As a semi-retired woodwind player, I have a love-loathe relationship with chamber music's most beloved ensemble. The string quartet — two violins, viola and a cello — has a bona fide status with composers of yesteryear and today, rendering it the go-to corps to recreate a pocket portable orchestra. It's also an audience favorite.

And rightfully so. The four instruments reside within the same musical family, which means they emit a homogenous sound, like a piano through its all-encompassing tessitura, from the highest screech to the lowest rumbling.

As an outsider to that world, other than the occasional Mozart Flute Quartet, I listen from afar when fiddles and friends take such compositions by Shostakovich, Bartok, Beethoven or anything commissioned by the Kronos String Quartet.

As a consolation price, we have the woodwind quintet made up of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn. Yet the ensemble is completely out of whack, musically speaking.

The French horn isn't even a woodwind, nor French by any means. There's nothing woody about the modern flute or the horn; they are made out of metal. And only the oboe and the bassoon have sound-production in common: The double reed.

With so many peculiarities, why is this combination an ensemble at all?

Perhaps in a rage of discordant jealously, instrumentalists outside of the string family decided they, too, wanted in on the chamber music craze that was sweeping Europe in the 17th and 18th century. Composers like Mozart and Haydn were mass composing string quartets and birthing them like the world was coming on an end. Wind players just didn't want to get left out.

It may have been Joseph II, whose preferred pairing of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns encouraged composers to write for this combination, later adding the flute as it became a standard in the orchestra of the classical period. Compositions by Anton Reicha and Franz Danzi ruled their day, though they are mostly used for didactic purposes and rarely performed as featured works nowadays.

The instrumentation of the wind quintet may lack uniformity, albeit it thrives in musical colors. This innate ability to assemble many hues of sound, whether from each individual instrument or through creative couplings, is what gives the quintet its prowess.

The beauty lies in its organic diversity.

One listen to the New York Woodwind Quintet, which will perform on the Houston Friends of Chamber Music stage Tuesday night at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, and that becomes evident. It's what happens when instrumental virtuosos — like flutist Carol Wincenc, oboist Stephen Taylor, clarinetist Charles Neidich, bassoonist Marc Goldberg and horn player William Purvis — come together to pay their respects to the music of an underappreciated genre.

Each artist has contributed so much to the music industry.

Bear in mind Wincenc's commission and recording of Christopher Rouse's Flute Concerto, Taylor's Grammy-nominated recording of Elliot Carter's Oboe Quartet, Neidich's premiere performances of works by Milton Babbitt and Joan Tower, Purvis' premiere of Steven Stucky's Trio for Oboe, Horn and Harpsichord at Carnegie Hall as part of the Emmanuel Ax Perspectives Series and Goldberg's many solo appearances.

The chance to hear just one is a musical treat. All five together is a tuneful indulgence.

You may not be readily familiar with the playbill, even if the program contains the boldface types of classical music.

Samuel Barber may be best known for his Adagio for Strings, the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11, and Knoxville: Summer of 1915, yet his programmatic Summer Music, originally commissioned and composed for the quintet, is just as nostalgic and sentimental, evoking scenes from a sultry day, from lazy awakenings to the hustle and bustle of a burgeoning Southern center.

Paul Hindemith's Kleine Kammermusik is robust and very German, sometimes dark and mischievous. Carl Nielsen's Wind Quintet is delightfully pastoral, Danish and somewhat schizophrenic, as all his music tends to be. Elliot Carter's Nine by Five and Pavel Haas' Wind Quintet Op. 10 are also on the program.

Here's the challenge: If you don't have a penchant for wind music, or you've never had the chance to hear a group do it justice, the New York Woodwind Quintet is as good as it gets. Whether you love it or hate it, don't you want the chance to find out for yourself?

The Houston Friends of Chamber Music present the New York Woodwind Quintet in concert on Tuesday at 8 p.m. at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. Tickets start at $20 and can be purchased online or by calling 713-348-5363.