Haydn

asin: B00005A3MJ binding: Audio CD list price: $17.98 USD amazon price: $17.98 USD

This record showcases Dennis Brain as soloist and in various chamber music combinations; afterward, he explains and demonstrates horns of different vintage, ending with the Prologue of Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Horn, Tenor, and Strings, written for him and Peter Pears. In every capacity, his incredible instrumental mastery, flawlessly beautiful tone, natural musicality, collegial spirit, and unerring sense of style are fully displayed. Among the program's rarities, a piece by Arnold Cooke is charming, romantic, and very English; wind quintets by Ibert and Milhaud are charming, Impressionist, and very French. Beethoven's Sextet Op. 81b for two horns and strings, an early work despite the late opus number, is lovely, brilliant, and full of high spirits; a Mozart Divertimento, originally for eight winds, is delightful. (The piano part mentioned in the booklet is not audible.) Brain's Quintet includes his brother Leonard on oboe, and flutist Gareth Morris, who also provides the liner notes and the photographs (unfortunately without identifying Brain's companions). The recording's weak spot is the Haydn Concerto, where Brain is hampered by an orchestra that sounds poor, plays out of tune and with unstylistic throbbing intensity. The high point is Schubert's "Auf dem Strom," written shortly before he died, one of his greatest songs set to one of his worst poems. Listeners who remember Pears's voice as a young man should be warned that it sounds entirely different: less light in weight and color, less otherworldly. However, the old vocal and expressive magic is fully intact and the performance, though the piano is much too soft, is riveting in its passionate urgency and heartbreaking in its yearning, resigned leave-taking, a sad reminder that we have lost these three artists, two of them very young. --Edith Eisler

asin: B000NDI4UW binding: Audio CD list price: $14.99 USD amazon price: $14.99 USD

It is with great pleasure that we present these four works for two solo horns and chamber orchestra. The opening concerto by Haydn has been a source of controversy among horn players for quite some time. This charming and highly melodic work has all the trademarks of a concerto by his contemporary, the horn player Antonio Rosetti. Indeed, it would not at all have been unusual for Rosetti to use the great Haydn name in order to sell what may have been his finest piece of music. Apparently that sort of thing was done rather regularly in those days. The version on this recording is from the first publication of the Oettinger-Wallenstein Manuscript and was arranged by Edmond Leloir. The concerto in E-flat by Rosetti, which we have included on this album, could almost stand as proof of this theory as there are many similarities between the two works. Antonio Rosetti understood the horn remarkably well- he was after all a horn player- and this is quite evident in these two works. The version recorded here of the Concerto Grosso number 11 from the larger group of works entitled L`estro armonico is an arrangement that was presented to us by Mr. Zoltan Varga with the request that we perform it at the Hungarian International Horn Festival at Mór. After assessing its success, we decided to include it on this recording.It has become a staple of our repertoire ever since. The decision regarding the fourth work of the album was not an easy one. There is, after all, a plethora of great concertos written for 2 horns and orchestra-Bach, Vivaldi, Leopold Mozart, Kuhlau, Händel and Telemann, to name just a few. Naturally we wanted to include something a little bit different and perhaps something new. Thus we came upon the idea to rework a piece of mine originally composed for solo horn and organ. We had previously performed this piece rearranged for two horns and piano at a recital in Rome. At that time, I knew that this Gothic-sounding work had not yet found its true home.