blog post Seeking the middle sound: In Concert Quiz

In Concert takes the quiz to middle ground this week. We feature instruments that are neither high nor low, but balanced somewhere in the middle register. Your job is to identify the solo instruments.

By popular demand we've put together this quiz. After our high and low quizes listeners asked for a final "middle register" quiz. So your job on this one is to identify the three solo instruments in the following orchestral excerpts. Each solo is seperated by a bicycle bell.

listenSend your answers to inconcert@cbc.ca

You must name the solo instruments. You need not identify the music, though bonus marks for those that do!

I have three prizes to give away this week, and they're all really quite beautiful box sets.

The first is called Le Violoncelle Baroque and comes from Naive. It's a compilation of four CDs of cello music by Graun, Telemann, Boccherini and Bach. Calling it baroque cello is a bit of a misnomer as two of the CDs feature the cellist Chriophe Coin playing the gamba. Well, that's not a cello. But in any case it's a swell set. Here's a bit of Christophe Coin playing the music of Vivaldi.

As for the other prizes, I have 2 copies to give away of the Pentatone Box set celebrating 10 years of this innovative Dutch label. The set includes 10 SACD's and includes performances by Julia Fischer, Arabella Steinbacher, Mari Kodama and Sir Neville Marriner. Here's a bit of Julia Fischer as recorded by Pentatone. She's performing the wonderful Mozart concertante with Gordan Nikolic. 

Last week I challenged listeners to identify four Bach cello suite excerpts NOT played on the cello.  You were to identify the instruments that were definitely not the cello.

You heard a saxophone, marimba, bassoon and a guitar.  It was darn tricky, I know.  So many had 3 out of 4 but only a handful got all four correct.  

Winning entries were received by Ryan Hum of Ottawa, ON; Nathan Pylypuk of Regina, SK; and Richard Parker of Centreville, NS.