The year 2021 is a fine one for British musical centenarians, whether the composers Robert Simpson and Malcolm Arnold or the present subject, the horn player Dennis Brain, who died tragically young at 36 in 1957. Complementing Warner Classics’ comprehensive 11-disc survey of his recordings as concerto and recital soloist as well as orchestral and chamber musician, Three Worlds’ new album focuses rather on Brain’s impact on horn composition and playing since then.

At the heart of the programme are works by two composers Brain worked with: Britten, the premiere of whose Third Canticle (1954) Brain gave the year before his death; and Malcolm Arnold, whose Fantasy for solo horn dates from 10 years later. These, along with Poulenc’s dramatic, heartfelt Élégie (1957), are repertoire works (all have been recorded many times) and the primary test for horn player Ben Goldscheider, walking partly in Brain’s footsteps – and acquitting himself brilliantly in the process. He makes no attempt to mimic Brain’s playing but in every bar of the programme his debt to and inspiration from his renowned predecessor are manifest.

Brain’s exceptional virtuosity inspired innumerable composers through his recordings (of repertoire from Mozart to the then still contemporary Hindemith and Gordon Jacob), reflected in the other works here. Huw Watkins’s cogent and compelling Lament (2020) takes Poulenc’s dramatic ‘juxtaposition of violent anger and lyrical beauty’ as its touchstone. Roxanna Panufnik’s Sonnets without Words reworks three settings from 1999-2014 as a purely instrumental and attractive suite for horn and piano, allowing Goldscheider to showcase his lyrical playing and fine sense of line. So does Maxwell Davies’s Fanfare Salute (2007), a patchwork of six tiny movements encompassing a world of texture and expression.

Goldscheider’s intonation and phrasing are impeccable throughout, as are Watkins’s accompaniments. James Gilchrist sings Britten’s setting of Edith Sitwell with real finesse, too, in an interpretation that ranks highly with any currently available rival. A fitting tribute to one of Britain’s greatest musicians.