One of the oddest facts about the repertoire of the horn is that, although it was the romantic movement's instrument par excellence, none of the romantic composers wrote a sonata for it. The nearest approach to that period on this excellent disc—as notable technically as musically—is the little-known Andante cantabile by Strauss, a warmly emotional piece written at the age of 24 (though published only posthumously) for his parents' silver wedding. It is in effect a lyrical meditation on a phrase from Verdi's La forza del destino: its melodic compass and wide dynamic range point to a complete understanding of the instrument—not so surprising, in view of the fact that his father was first horn at the Munich Opera. Rossini's father too had been a hronist, by whose side Rossini himself, as a teenager, had for a time played second; and in the present 'sin of old age' he took evident pleasure in drawing on his experience to present the French virtuoso Eugene Vivier (a practical joker, like himself) with a work that would test his technical prowess to the limit. Needless to say, Hermann Baumann carries this through with both aplomb and sensitivity, his tone more 'wide-bore' that that of, say, Alan Civil (on a long-deleted EP for EMI), and using more vibrato: very striking is his expressive nuance in the quasi-recitative at the change of key. In the Czerny curiosity Baumann, after expounding the initial broad cantilena, has for the most part to cede the limelight to the almost delirious pyrotechnics of the piano part, which Leonard Hokanson throws off with the utmost vivacity; nevertheless the horn is also given some demanding excursions into its low register.
Baumann's vital musicality and Hokanson's clear pianism are persuasively associated in the Beethoven sonata: it is interesting to compare this with Baumann's old LP recording (Telefunken SAWT9547, 7/70) of the work on a natural horn and accompanied on a fortepiano. But he has a surprise up his sleeve in the shape of a most worthwhile discovery—a finely crafted sonata by Nikolaus von Krufft, an almost unknown Viennese civil servant and gifted amateur composer who died in 1818 at the age of 39. Its expressive and melancholy slow movement (with anticipations of Chophin in the piano writing) and its polacca finale (which contains one quite astonishing modulation) are particularly appealing, calling forth superlative playing from both artists.'