Dennis Brain (hom)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
(Leader, Paul Beard)
Conducted by Hermann Scherchen
Of the four horn concertos by Mozart, three are in E flat, the key favoured by Ignaz Leutgeb (or Leitgeb), the virtuoso for whom they were written. Like Mozart, he came from Salzburg and settled in Vienna, where in addition to playing the horn he kept a cheesemonger's shop. To judge by the way that Mozart used him as a butt for his jokes, the two men must have been on the friendliest of terms.
Schubert was nineteen when, in April
1816, he wrote his Fourth Symphony; he himself gave it the title of ' Tragic ' at a later date. The Symphony was performed in private in Vienna, but not heard in public until 1849, twenty-one years after Schubert's death. The work owes something to Beethoven in his ' C minor ' mood, but its dark colouring is by no means unrelieved. Harold Rutland
Schubert's Symphony No. 5: October 12