Jean Baptiste Senaillé’s attractive Allegro spiritoso began life as the last movement of a Violin Sonata – indeed Senaillé was regarded as one of the leading violinists in Paris at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This has always been a well-known piece in the violin repertoire, but it entered a new era of identity in the 1920s when the legendary English bassoonist Archie Camden made the first ever recording of Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto with conductor Sir Hamilton Harty. As the concerto required five sides of a three-disc 78rpm set, a short additional item was needed to fill the remaining side, so Harty and Camden put pen to paper and turned Senaillé’s solo violin piece into a lively, characterful miniature for bassoon and orchestra that has arguably become more popular than the original work.

from notes by Laurence Perkins © 2004