Richard Strauss’s wind sonatinas, composed in the last years before his death, have a distinct Mozartian inheritance and were also inspired during the composer’s youth when he heard his father playing the horn in the Munich Court Opera; memories of the timbre of the horn dominated his music throughout his life. Strauss’s wind textures here, therefore, are very much his own, drawing on horn tone as the basis of his sonorities. Strauss’s Romanticism, too, is immediately apparent in the opening of the first of the sonatinas, with a nostalgic Romance to follow, leading directly into a more cheerful Minuet, while the extended finale has more than a hint of Till’s unpredictable precocity.

The ‘Happy’ No 2 opens with a boisterous, multicoloured, horn-based fanfare to create a lively cheerful mood, which persists throughout, balanced by a lyrical counter-theme. The Andantino has a charming, courtly elegance, followed by a perky Minuet with a beguiling Trio. The contradictory finale opens darkly, even yearningly, and this mood is to return briefly later; but the music soon lightens and the work closes in an apotheosis of high spirits.

The appropriately named Armonia Ensemble are members of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra who all understand how to blend perfectly as well as take solos, and they are surely perfectly balanced by the recording. Altogether a most rewarding coupling.