This is a disc guaranteed to make the listener fall in love with the ripe, fruity, often tangy tone of the natural valveless Waldhorn, beautifully caught in the EMI recording. Though Andrew Clark, who graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1987, is well established in various period-performance groups, this EMI Debut disc is his first full solo recording, offering the most tempting grouping of works.
There is a flamboyance in his playing which has one reassessing even the lesser works here. In the Beethoven Sextet, Clark and his horn partner Roger Montgomery take the lead, seductively bringing out the antiphonal effects between horns and strings, and having one marvel at the chromatic writing in the central section of the Adagio. Despite the late opus number, this is an early work of 1796, written – as Clark himself explains in his highly informative, if brief, note – to test the prowess of Nicolaus Simrock, the composer’s mentor in writing for horn and later a celebrated publisher.
Both in the Sextet and in the Horn Sonata Clark is splendid in pointing Beethoven’s sharp syncopations. He takes issue with Barry Tuckwell over his preference for the modern horn in this sonata (Decca, 8/75 – nla), suggesting that the effect of alternating open and stopped notes on the Waldhorn, whether comical or not, is something Beethoven clearly intended. In Mozart, too, Clark’s rhythmic flair could not be more winning, whether in the charming miniatures of the duos or the outer movements of the Quintet, even if a slow pace is set in the Andante.
Where in the Beethoven sonata the balance with the fortepiano favours the horn, the balance in the Brahms is fairer, with Geoffrey Govier opting for a 1971/2 Bosendorfer. Thanks to Clark’s artistry, the natural horn movingly intensifies the elegiac quality of the slow movement (written soon after the death of the composer’s mother), while his agility in the hunting-horn finale is breathtaking. An endlessly refreshing disc.'