Continuo Connect — Profile // Boxwood & Brass

Praised for ‘spectacular playing’ (Early Music Today) and ‘button-bright performances’ (Gramophone), Boxwood & Brass is a group of exceptional period wind players dedicated to the chamber music and Harmoniemusik of the Classical and early-Romantic periods.

Musical and scholarly virtuosity go hand-in-hand in Boxwood’s projects, which regularly involve tracing unknown works in far-flung archives and reviving sounds unheard for 200 years. An important part of Boxwood’s repertoire is arrangements made for the Harmonien of the late 18th and early 19th century. Bassoonist (Dr.) Robert Percival continues this tradition by creating bespoke arrangements for the ensemble that challenge audiences to hear old music in new ways.

The individual members of the group perform with the world’s leading period-instrument orchestras, including the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Dunedin Consort, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, L’Orchestre de Champs Élysées, Ensemble Pygmalion, the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, and Bach Collegium Japan.

Boxwood & Brass were ensemble-in-association at the University of Huddersfield from 2016-2021, and in 2022 worked with contemporary composers at St. Catherine's College Oxford for the Henfrey Prize. Boxwood's debut CD 'Music for a Prussian Salon' featured music by Franz Tausch and his circle, and 'Beethoven Transformed' volumes 1 and 2, including the premiere recording of Carl Czerny’s arrangement of the Septet op.20, were released on Resonus Classics in 2019-2020 to unanimous critical praise.