Rossini wrote these six sonatas for strings – two violins, cello and double-bass – at the precocious age of twelve. He was scathing about them in later life, even after transcribing them for string quartet – a form in which they have retained popularity and a place in the record catalogue – but they reveal in more than embryonic form his talent for virtuosic writing and his infallible ear for a fine tune, no less than Mendelssohn’s string symphonies do at a similar age: both composers show a sophisticated fertility of invention beyond that of Mozart at the same age. Now these sonatas take on new colours, transcribed for flute, clarinet, horn and bassoon, and dispatched with élan by the wind principals of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.
