I have to admit I’m a real pushover when it comes to boxed sets that combine the familiar with the unfamiliar, especially if performance and recording standards are high. Sony Classical’s 12-cd set Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet: the compete Columbia Album Collection 19658813262, c£39.00 achieves just that, whether in mono-recorded Mozart and Beethoven Quintets superbly balanced and trimly executed in collaboration with pianist Rudolf Serkin, or an equally poised though relatively cool Mozart Quintet in excellent stereo with Robert Casadesus. I should point out that the stereo recordings achieve pin-point clarity with focused spatial information that brings you straight to the sessions, especially if you’re listening on cans.

A disc of Italian woodwind music from Vivaldi to Ponchielli delights the ear and a programme of pastorales conceived by bassoonist Sol Schonbach (one of America’s best ‘back in the day’) ranges from Percy Grainger’s ‘Walking Time’ to Schubert’s ‘Shepherd’s Song’ (Rosamunde) and two versions of Stravinsky’s ‘Pastorale’. A rare novelty is Ernest Toch’s Five Pieces for Winds and Percussion, music that is both whimsical and entertaining, as well as his Sonatinetta for flute, clarinet and bassoon. The same CD includes – as a bonus – the melodious, stylistically Bartókian 5^th String Quartet by Henry Cowell beautifully played by the Beaux-Arts String Quartet. Janácek’s Concertino calls on the idiomatic pianism of Rudolf Firkusny – a real master in this repertoire (try the snappish clarinet-and-piano second movement) and as for Poulenc’s Sextuor who could resist the composer’s own piano playing at 2:26 into the first movement: totally gorgeous. Add, among other goodies, Samuel Barber’s Summer Music and Wind Quintets by Nielsen and Schoenberg, not to mention Forms and Sounds by (and featuring) Ornette Coleman, and you get the drift, ‘room music’ (as Grainger might have called it) shared among five or more, with rarely a note wasted.