Four CD set. Dennis Brain is The Horn Player who performs Mozart, Strauss, Beethoven, Hindemith, Wagner, Schumann, Haydn and Jacob.The Siegfried of the horn' is how Sir Thomas Beecham affectionately dubbed Dennis Brain, the brilliant horn player whose career ended with such cruel suddenness when the car in which he was driving home overnight from the 1957 Edinburgh Festival crashed into a tree on the outskirts of London. Beecham's graceful description derives from the hero's horn-call in Wagner's opera, music that had come to be particularly associated with Brain: he had played it to illustrate the horn's capabilities in HMV's 1947 recording Instruments of the Orchestra, and in the 1950s, the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, had called him in for three successive seasons to play the taxing horn passages in the company's Ring cycles.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
It's [almost] all there!:
Like many young students of the horn, back in the 1970's, I was inspired by the music on the Seraphim LP "The Art of Dennis Brain." I particularly loved the performance of the Minuet and Trio from Dittersdorf's Partita in D, something I was no longer able to enjoy after my turntable [record player] died, late in the previous century, and the album was never re-released on CD. Imagine my joy to find that the identical recording is listed among the twenty-five performances in this four-CD set, as are all... more info
Wonderful Dennis Brain compliation:
Dennis Brain was the greatest horn player of the 20th century and this is the greatest collection of his recordings I've found yet. The famous 1953 recordings of the Mozart horn concertos conducted by Karajan are included. There are a plethora of other wonderful gems in this set. The EMI website has the entire track list and notes posted online. Do yourself a favor and read those. They do a wonderful job of highlighting each recording. This is truly a unmatched collection of Brain's best recordings.
Icon: Dennis Brain:
A truly classic recording spanning the career of the greatest horn player of the 20th century. The early recordings of the Mozart concerti, not previoulsy released are a real treat-such youthful bravura and reckless abandon in the playing and cadenzas. I would highly recommend this recording.
Tracks:
1. Allegro moderato
2. Romanza: Andante
3. Rondo: Allegro vivace
1. Allegro maestoso
2. Andante
3. Rondo
1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Rondo: Allegro
1. Allegro moderato
2. Poco adagio, quasi Andante / 3. Allegro moderato
