Thomas Crome and Gunther Hauer Hindemith Sonata for Horn and Piano http://www.mp3.com/thomas_crome Journey from night music into bustling dawn, it is a pattern of other neeo clasical works, and it is the pattern of Hindemith's Horn Sonata. A work marked by interlocking figurations in the piano and pure melody in the horn. It is so easy for the busy piano to overwhelm the soloist. Instead the pianist should create a shimmering curtain before which the horn player sings. But to sing requires a grasp of the inflections which give a work the neo-classical sound - the turns toward the tritone, the 7th chords where otherwise a triad would be expected, the fourth derrived chords. The first movement - moderate - is more than a cousin to Mahler's &th Symphony it is opening and form, obove an array of shifting textures, a series of chromatically inflected melodies create forward motion, which in their reflections in the figuration seem to have a dream like quailty, as we see a man, walking down a beach late at night, and his shadows cast by fires move as if animated on their own. The challenge for the horn player is encapsulated in the very opening of the sonata. Hindemith wished to combine neo-classical ideas of development, with the ability to create enormously long themese for development - themes which did not rest on older harmonic underpinnings. Hence the melodic line is inflected four times, each time extending it - stretching it out, beyond what it could otherwise have been. Thomas Crome instantly puts himself equal to this task. Listen to just the first 9 seconds, feel the slight swelling of tone and accentuation on each important note, and how he then rounds the phrase out at the final moment. The secret of the second movement is to maintain a sense of calm agitation. It is of a type and richness that can only be called pretty, an instantly appealing sonority which the composer played out, and toys with any player who wanders in without full command of his resources. Here Herr Hauer earns Kudos at the piano for brilliantly and smoothly playing the intense piano part without giving over to flaying the dissonances, there is that perfect German Expressionist shimmer - a kind of dark cousin to the light of French Impressionism. Thomas Crome makes his first entry with all of the smoothness which is required, and maintains a pure even tone throughout most of the movement - seeming first close and then far away. These is again night music, but it is not sorrowful, morning or maudlin. Instead it is the song of the night bird, flying through the wood, moonlight enriching the leaves and gilding its wings when it chooses to flutter up and out. The pianist must be always in the right place, sensitive to rhythmic demands of the soloist, who must breath in and out like the wind through the trees. The great interpretive difficulty of this music comes at the end, when the night glamour finally gives out, expires away - to lead to a rustling morning twilight. Crome takes this challenge head on, he is given only a long descending horn line, and chooses to gradually loosen the breath control, until the final note is almost a gasp rich with overtones - a chromatic chord on a single note. He is then instantly in place to play tightly in the recapitulation. It is one of those moments where a listener feels for a moment the musician has made some sort of ghastly mistake, only in the next moment to realise that instead the soloist has a keen insight into structure and has taken a great risk to illuminate it. The third movement gives us the morning Bustle of a new day, a day in Berlin or Vienna as they waken perhaps. Thomas Crome hits precise rhythmic outbursts and then lands cat gracefully on the next cantilena. The third movement is where the communication between the soloist and the pianist is most difficult and most rewarding. There are long passages of solo work broken up by short interuptions from the other player - these only make sense if the supporting player can create the bridging between them - the players must take up the rhythm almost without pause. This is difficult because in a normal concerto style setting of a sonata, the players take turns one leading then the other. Here the pianist must often be another set of horns, and the horn player a third hand to the pianist. Thomas Crome also shows himself capable of using the range of blowing and phrasing techniques open to the French Horn, from almost puffed out attacks to melodies spun out like thread. In this day and age when "speaking for ones times" seems to be a mania among the chattering classes, it is good to point out that this pretty and often optimistic work was composed on the eve of terrible conflict. It is of itself with themes that have such a powerful upward thrust that one is reminiscent of the music which would alter be used for the first Star Trek series. Musical works speak not for times, but for people. To make this work speak, these two musicians have combined an exquisite sense of taste, a knowledge of music which is both difficult to understand and requires intense patience and care. Thomas Crome is listed as a first Horn, and his easy and graceful way through the difficulties of this work lead one to feel that the Baden Orchestra's horn players have a fine leader who is as capable with his head as with is hands and heart. Gunther Hauer delivers a brilliant collaborative performance, always in place, always understanding. One might ask if he has the interest in conducting. Stirling Newberry http://www.mp3.com/ssn War and Romance Radio: http://stations.mp3s.com/stations/8/war_and_romance.html