Inevitably any recording of the two Strauss horn concertos comes up against the Dennis Brain/Sawallisch performances on EMI, but these are in many ways incomparable and must be regarded now as hors concours. It is not that no horn player since Brain has approached his technical ability. Several have. But it was not only technique with him; there was something about his tone, some impishness of spirit from the man himself, that gave it a wit and a sheen that are inimitable. Baumann's performances on the Philips issue with Masur are splendid, but they are rather four-square and po-faced, for all their virtuosity.
If one has the Brain disc, one also has a recording that shows its age. This latest recording from EMI is not only impeccable from the engineering viewpoint, it has performances by Radovan Vlatkovic, the young Yugoslav principal horn of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, that come nearest to capturing the zest in the music that Brain conveyed so magnificently. Even in the Second Concerto composed in 1942 as one of the first of the so-called 'Indian Summer' instrumental works, where the music is so much more sophisticated, Vlatkovic still reminds us that the spirit of Till Eulenspiegel lurks behind every bar.
The First Concerto (1882) was begun while Strauss was still a schoolboy. It has the vigour of an incipient Don Juan and although it is nearer to Mendelssohn than to the Strauss of six years later when Don Juan was written, it remains a work of immense charm and poetry—surely Mozart would have said a good word for it. Vlatkovic plays it with an infectious relish in its youthful audacities, and the accompaniment by the English Chamber Orchestra under Jeffrey Tate is admirable in both Concertos.
The disc is generously filled out with two other pieces from Strauss's youth which, like the First Concerto, were tributes to his horn-playing father. The song Alphorn is to a typically romantic text by Kerner and the 14-year-old composer let no chance slip to illustrate it. Ann Murray sings it a little staidly. The Andante (1888) is all that remains of a projected horn sonata to mark the silver wedding of Strauss's parents. It is a melodious fragment, in C major, and Vlatkovic shows enough restraint to make it more convincing than it might be in a less sensitive performance.'