condition (record/cover): NM / NM | Five works for brass quintet spanning the century's major schools of composition, performed by the Brass Ring, a Connecticut-based American quintet active from the mid-1980s to late 1990s. Members drawn from the Hartford Symphony and New Haven Symphony - Jay Lichtmann and Claire Newbold, trumpets; Kirsten Bendixen, horn; David Kayser, trombone; Karl Kramer, tuba - all graduates of the Yale School of Music and serious advocates of contemporary repertoire. They commissioned works from David Del Tredici, Jacob Druckman, and Ned Rorem, and this disc includes world premiere recordings.

The centerpiece is Hans Werner Henze's Fragmente aus einer Show (1971), the world premiere recording. The fragments are extracted from Der langwierige Weg in die Wohnung der Natascha Ungeheuer (The Tedious Way to the Place of Natascha Ungeheuer) - one of Henze's most politically radical works, written during his militant Marxist period in the early 1970s. The brass quintet version was premiered in October 1971 by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble on an American tour. Henze scored it for horn, two trumpets, trombone, and Wagner tuba - a characteristically generous and unusual sonority. Alongside it: Paul Hindemith's Four Madrigals, Witold Lutoslawski's Mini Overture - a compact, witty piece that belies its modest title - Edward Gregson's Quintet for Brass, and Michel Leclerc's Par Monts et Par Vaux. Five different national traditions (German, German-American, Polish, British, French) and five different relationships to tonality, form, and the physical character of brass instruments. LP on Crystal Records S551.