Original music or transcriptions? For the Fribourg Brass Quartet, the answer lies not in choosing one or the other but in building a repertoire originally limited to ancient or contemporary music. Renaissance music has, on one hand, its attraction to brass with the color and emphatic rhythms of its dances, and, on the other, the more restrained warmth and character present, for example, in the Pavane.

The austere Gaillarde by Frescobaldi is a solid construction in fugue that portrays the first period of the Baroque. Bruckner’s remarkable Ave Maria, classic, expressive, noble, provides an entrance for an all-too-rare masterwork of original music for brass, Morgenmusik by Paul Hindemith. In devoting much of this record to lighter music, which should not be taken to imply less dedication to its interpretation, the Fribourg Brass Quartet addresses composers, works, or styles generally not present in traditional repertoires of chamber music for brass. The suite from Tchaikovsky’s Album Pour les Enfants is an example.

In Bela Bartok’s three Hungarian dances, as in Grieg’s Spring, we see the influence of musical folklore, which also inspired Tchaikovsky’s suite and is the source of the English song, Greensleeves.

J-F Michel’s Suite is a light divertissement of color and feeling as enchanting to musicians as to listeners.

It was at an evening of chamber music in 1977 that the Fribourg Brass Quartet was formed. Concerts, recording sessions, and radio contests have given the quartet a larger audience. Notable was a first prize award at the Riddes national competition for youth in 1981.

The Fribourg Brass Quartet is composed of Jean-Francois Michel, solo trumpet with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Munich, Guy Michel, solo trumpet with the Symphony Orchestra of Bienne, Dany Bonvin, solo trombone with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Munich, and Pascal Widder, professor at the Fribourg Conservatory of Music.