La Mort d’Abel (1810/1825) – halfway between opera and oratorio – presents, in a spectacular fashion, the murder of Abel by his brother Cain consumed by jealousy. Rodolphe Kreutzer deploys therein the grand art of the tragédie lyrique imagined by Gluck whilst adding his own personal touches, which identifies him as being more than the modest violinist dedicatee of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. As a top ensemble in Belgium and across Northern Europe, Les Agrémens and the Chœur de chambre de Namur have, for a long time, been exploring rare repertories with enthusiasm, creativity and to the highest standards. Assisted by singers from the rising generation (notably tenor Sébastien Droy and baritone Jean-Sébastien Bou), conductor Guy Van Waas ventures triumphantly into music which nobody before him had imagined there existing such quality.

Rodolphe Kreutzer’s final three violin concertos are among his greatest achievements as a composer. While handling a Beethovenian orchestra with a craftsman’s sure touch, it is the purity and depth of tone, energetic fire and complete technical mastery required of the soloist that set these works among the most perfect examples of the French violin concerto. Axel Strauss, Professor of Violin at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and heard on concert stages worldwide, has been acclaimed ‘an excellent violinist who plays these with wit and verve’ (Limelight). Naxos plans to record all of Kreutzer’s violin concertos.

These must be among the earliest of oboe quintets, either on or off record. They are also among the least familiar; but of course not at all necessarily among the least rewarding on that account. Most rewarding is the Crussel; and it is good to see such a long-neglected composer now at last coming into his own. A divertimento as such is far from unusual for wind; but this one, in a single continuous movement (with varied sections) certainly is. The sections add up to a normal balance of (roughly) quick-slow-quick, the slow particularly effective in its evocation of Mozart's favourite G minor laments by deserted sopranos (there is a difference, though: probably none of Mozart's sopranos ever played the oboe so well as this). Throughout Crusell, himself a wind-player, treates the oboe as leader, and throughout he writes the most elegant and varied of music.

Rodolphe Kreutzer, a virtuoso violinist and composer, was a central figure of the French violin school. The work that brought him his most enduring fame as a composer was his forty classical Études ou Caprices for violin solo. These etudes first published in 1796, quickly established themselves in violin repertoire laying the foundations for violin technique which is why they are regarded as indispensable by virtuosos and teachers alike. The collection not only includes practice pieces that require good technical ability but also character pieces which are expressive and fun to play.