Few horn players produce such a luscious sound as David Pyatt, beautifully caught here in a clear, well-balanced recording. It was as long ago as 1988 that at 14 he became the youngest ever BBC Young Musician of the Year, and as long ago as 1996 that he signed his recording contract with Erato. His Erato version of the Mozart horn concertos (7/97) is outstanding in every way, but too little has followed that initial issue. This fine collection of British horn music is all the more welcome, bringing together two inspired trios, beautifully written for the horn, as well as the Britten vocal items with Anthony Rolfe Johnson as soloist.
Britten’s Tennyson setting was originally designed for the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, but discarded for not fitting in with the final scheme. Previously it has been recorded with string accompaniment (by Neil Mackie on an EMI disc, 12/88 – nla, and by Christoph Pregardien for BIS, 8/92), but here you have Britten’s original piano sketch, less evocative but still tantalisingly beautiful with its anticipations of the Nocturne. Rolfe Johnson is at his most mellifluous, and so he is in the Canticle No 3, where he intones Edith Sitwell’s elegiac words with hypnotic intensity, and is well matched by Pyatt and Donohoe.
The Lennox Berkeley Horn Trio was recorded by EMI in the mid-1950s, soon after it was written, with Colin Hornsley (who commissioned the work) at the piano, with Manoug Parikian on the violin and Dennis Brain on the horn (2/55 – nla). In the age of the stereo LP that mono recording disappeared all too quickly, making this superb Erato version all the more welcome. It is one of Berkeley’s most appealing chamber works, beautifully crafted and with a central slow movement as well as a slow, lyrical variation in the long finale which are among his most moving inspirations.
The Hugh Wood is similarly striking, in two movements built on sharply drawn material. The first movement presents brilliant flurries of energetic writing set against deeply reflective passages, with slow meditations finally predominating. The second movement, far shorter than the first, rounds off the work in a sharply rhythmic display piece. In both movements Pyatt relishes the composer’s almost Brahmsian love of the instrument. Not that Peter Donohoe and Levon Chilingirian are put in the shade, but this is at root a horn-oriented disc, and I look forward to many more from David Pyatt.'