Horn Play

The renowned horn player Martin Owen is joined by the violinist Francesca Dego and pianist Alessandro Taverna in this varied and compelling programme. Mozart's Horn Quintet, KV 407 is one of the earliest examples of the horn in chamber music - although this partnership was embraced by Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Schumann among many others. The Quintet is unusually scored for horn, violin, two violas, and cello, but the majority of the melodic interplay in the work occurs between the horn and the violin, so replacing the lower strings with piano works very well. Brahms's Horn Trio was the first major work for this instrumentation, and remains one of the finest in the repertoire.

This exciting debut album from Melbourne-based Quercus Trio explores the rich vein of Australian chamber music written for the gorgeous combination of violin, French horn and piano. Spanning forty years of creativity, it features two world-premiere recordings – Larry Sitsky’s Armenian-inspired Barerq and Gordon Kerry’s No Abiding City, a gentle meditation on the impermanence of things – along with important chamber works by Roger Smalley, Elena Kats-Chernin and Don Banks.

Two of pianist/vocalist Shirley Horn's rarest (and earliest) recordings are reissued in full on this single CD. Actually, Horn does not play piano at all, sticking exclusively to vocals, and she had less control over the interpretations (being persuaded to sing some songs at faster-than-usual tempos) than she would later on. The arrangements for the big bands that back Horn were written by Jimmy Jones and Quincy Jones and, although the overall music is enjoyable, Horn would have much preferred to be the pianist behind her own vocals. Since she would only record two other albums during the next 15 years (sticking to playing locally in the Washington, D.C., area while raising her daughter), this CD gives one a valuable look at the early Shirley Horn; her distinctive vocal style was already nearly fully formed.

"Greer is a highly accomplished player of the natural horn… I find Greer's playing very musicianly: unusually graceful in the phrasing of the quick movements, with gentle, thoughtful playing in K417 and some lovely smooth and clear lines in K495, while the slow movements are all beautifully done—the Romance of K447 refined and graceful, that of K495 often truly poetic with happy details of timing. And there is no shortage of wit in the finales, or of high spirits. Greer improvises his cadenzas: in the first movement of K495 he does, rightly I think, simply a longish flourish, with no reference to the themes of the movement." (Stanley Sadie, Gramophone Magazine)

SAFT (meaning squash, as in the concentrated liquid made from fruit juice and sugar, which is diluted to make a drink, in Norwegian) is a progressive rock band from Bergen, Norway, with their most active period in the early 70's. They were one of the first Norwegian rock bands to sing in Norwegian Nynorsk (which is based on rural, spoken Norwegian, and is one of four official languages in Norway). The core of the band is the two brothers THUE, Ove and Trygve, who are the only members to be part of both of the band's incarnations, both of which set benchmarks in Norwegian rock. Initially the band's music was rooted in typical early 70's heavy prog and pop rock.