Listeners seeing the subtitle "
Works for Horn and Orchestra by Richard Strauss
" may wonder what the
Four Last Songs
are doing on the program, at its center no less. The answer lies in the arrangements of the songs for soprano and chamber orchestra, apparently newly made by
Eberhard Kloke
. The horn is prominent in this arrangement, which has an intriguing effect, even if the pieces fall into the category of using the musical text as a stimulus to further creative activity; it is as if
Kloke
extracts lines from the counterpoint and gives them added emphasis by assigning them to the horn in a transparent context. There are also two early
Strauss
horn works, one featuring the rich voice of soprano
Sonja Gornik
, who is also heard in the
. Bookending the program are the two perenially popular
horn concertos, one from
1883
, early in his career, and one from
1942
, as he foresaw German culture crumbling around him. They have a sunny mood and a Mozartian manner in common, which is remarkable in the case of the
Horn Concerto No. 2 in E flat major
, and they respond well to the clean, low-key approach of hornist
Christoph Eß
. This is a somewhat curious release, assembled from recordings made at different times and lacking much in the way of booklet notes (there are no texts for the vocal pieces), but it contains material very likely of interest to
lovers. ~ James Manheim