An interestingly mixed programme apparently taken live from two concerts of the Philharmonisches Orchester Hansestadt Lübeck in 2007 (Strauss) and 2008 (Franck). The audiences are mostly very quiet, and the engineering was done by Cybele technicians (therefore presumably in DSD).

Lover's of Richard Strauss' music will be familiar with his characteristically glorious use of French horns in his symphonic tone poems, especially the ripely nostalgic solos in their codas. Well, here we can judge the origin of his fascination for the horn; two of his father Franz's own horn concertos. The young Richard was brought up with the sound of the horn in his home, as Franz was first horn player at the Munich Court Orchestra for over 50 years, referred to as "the Joachim of the horn" by conductor Hans von Bülow. He was, however, very conservative in his own musical affinities - Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven were his touchstones, although Weber seems to have had some influences in his concertos featured here.

Franz Strauss' two horn concertos are rarities indeed. They exemplify the composer's own carefully cultivated, famous nobility and purity of tone. His solos emphasise the singing capability of the instrument, rather than empty virtuosity. Their form is the usual three-movement one, with a slow movement between two faster ones, but they are played without a break, particularly the C minor which has written-in transitions (separate tracks are allocated, however). As Early Romantic pieces, they do not follow the later more complex development of sonata form, and the finales re-use material from the first movements.

Marie Luise Neunecker is in great demand as one of the world's greatest horn players, and she presents these beautifully-crafted and tuneful works as though they were masterpieces, with golden tone and subtly nuanced cantabile lines. She and Swiss conductor Roman Brogli-Sacher capture Strauss's inventive good humour and charm in splendid performances, with the orchestra obviously enjoying the excursion into unfamiliar territory too. It is a great pleasure to hear Franz's own music, and it explains much about his son's favouring of the instrument in his peerless orchestrations. There aren't enough horn concertos in the world, and it is delightful to have these two in such fine sound, especially as it is clear that they are models for the son's own horn concertos.

The disc begins with one of Richard Strauss' early works, the Serenade for 16 Winds in Eb Major, Op. 7, composed at the age of 17. Previously dismissive of the young composer's efforts, von Bülow was deeply impressed by the Serenade, and his subsequent support changed the course of Richard's career. Using a quartet of horns (as did Mozart in his Gran Partita K361), Strauss junior scores a solid bass with contra-bassoon and bass tuba. The work is an arc-like form in a single movement, full of good tunes and with a light-hearted and gentle wit. Richard's several works for wind and brass often are omitted from 'complete' sets of his orchestral music, and the recording here sets it in an attractive acoustic halo with pinpoint positioning in a good perspective, with delectable reproduction of thesuperbly-balanced instrumental timbres.

A different session was used for the final work, an orchestration of Cesar Franck's great masterpiece, his Piano Quartet in F minor. Pianist Mathias Weber claims to have always thought that the work was like a piano reduction of an orchestral piece, and set about re-arranging it thus. Rather than a concerto (the piano part is particularly strenuous and virtuosic much of the time), he subtitles the work as a symphony that requires a piano. He explains his approach in detail in the booklet.

Before auditioning the arrangement, I prepared myself by listening to the superb reading by Michael Levinas with the Ludvig Quartet (Naxos RBCD). After this, what a disappointment Weber's effort was. The full orchestral approach obliterated all the subtlety and point of Franck's darkly passionate work, replacing it with garish colours and melodramatic overstatement. Moreover, Weber's playing is heavy-handed, metrically plodding and simply too loud most of the time. He is not helped by a very close piano recording, with brittle mid and clattery upper range and no air around it. The orchestra too is close, unrefined and two-dimensional even in 5.0 multichannel. Brogli-Sacher seems to have collaborated in this plodding interpretation, and the whole piece seemed to last an eternity. I found myself yearning for the touching "molto sentimento" and "Dolcissimo" piano lines touched in so delicately by Michael Levinas. The Franck is given what sounds like tentative applause at its conclusion.

There are rarities indeed on this disc. I would certainly want it for the very desirable Strauss pieces, to which I award *****/*****, and ignore the Franck (***/***) - a pity, because this superlatively imaginative chamber work deserves a much wider audience and, in a more subtle arrangement for strings and piano only, might just have worked.

Copyright © 2010 John Miller and HRAudio.net

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