'Punto blows magnifique’, enthused Mozart to his father from Mannheim in 1778. At the end of the century the Bohemian virtuoso Giovanni Punto (alias for Jan Václav Stich) inspired a horn sonata from Beethoven, written, so the story goes, in a single day. Playing a natural horn with a wider-than-usual cor basse mouthpiece, as used by Punto, Teunis van der Zwart here presents a tribute to the most influential horn player of his age.

Beethoven’s entertaining sonata takes pride of place. Recordings from, inter alia, Thomas Müller (Harmonia Mundi, 1/02) and Anthony Halstead (Decca) have shown how much more flavoursome this music sounds on the natural horn, bereft of the smooth, Vorsprung durch Technik plumbing of its modern counterpart. In collusion with the brilliant Alexander Melnikov, playing an overtone-rich early 19th-century fortepiano, van der Zwart exploits the disruptive contrasts between registers, and between stopped and open notes, as vividly as I’ve ever heard. With the wider mouthpiece, soft open notes become slightly more veiled, as van der Zwart points out in his note. At the other end of the spectrum he gleefully milks the stopped notes’ potential for eeriness or raucousness. The snarling, rasping arpeggios in the first movement’s development and the gravelly growls in the recapitulation make the point. Phrasing with generous flexibility, the players respond eagerly to each other. Witty touches of embellishment enhance the feeling of spontaneous delight in the moment. If you want unruffled mellifluousness, look elsewhere.

Of the other three works, the sonata by Beethoven’s one-time pupil Ferdinand Ries is more theatrically flashy – and rather more prolix – than his master’s. Melnikov duly relishes his virtuoso flights, never letting the reams of semiquavers lapse into routine, while the combination of ghostly stopped notes and the fortepiano’s sordino pedal induce a pleasurable shudder at the opening of the slow movement.

If Ries, inevitably, owes a debt to Beethoven, the sonata by Danzi, who cut his musical teeth as a cellist in the famed Mannheim Orchestra, is more graciously Mozartian in idiom. The Rondo’s central episode hints at the fashionable ‘Turkish’ style. This is another thoroughly agreeable work, delivered with brio, grace and, not least, unabashed enjoyment of the natural horn’s penchant for roughing things up. Punto himself is represented courtesy of Melnikov’s transcription of one of his horn concertos. Despite a pleasantly melancholic Adagio, it’s the least interesting work here, with the pianist often reduced to a mere sidekick. But while the music, above all the decorous final Rondeau en chasse, tends to sound like tamed Mozart, van der Zwart’s playing has all the colour and no-holds-barred daring that characterise the whole disc. A winner, and not only for horn fanciers.