The Playful Pachyderm (Includes 'Funeral March of a Marionette' (Gounod) & Romance (Elgar)

'Perkins is a compelling advocate of the instrument, not only in his painstaking work as orchestrator and arranger, and his enthusiastic and well-researched booklet notes, but most of all in his playing … This is a delightful disc which will be of interest to a much wider audience than merely the bassoon-crazy'
(International Record Review)

This joyous new disc takes us deep into the wondrous world of 'all-things bassoon' - original pieces, arrangements time-tested and well loved, and new versions of old favourites for the instrument. Laurence Perkins takes up the challenge in his arrangements of wordless songs by Fauré and Ravel; folk song finds its place - a nod to the instrument's distinguished ancestry dating all the way back to the medieval period; and humour, of course, is never far away - the bassoon is after all (to paraphrase Ashlyn's bizarre dialogue between voice and bassoon) an instrument as much suited to the innuendo-laden serenading of one's lover as to the killing of rodents