In this astute interleaving of old and new, horn-player Ben Goldscheider and pianist Richard Uttley’s lunchtime recital could not have been more sonorous or richly satisfying. They opened with Schumann’s Three Fantasiestücke, Op 73, which is more often the province of clarinettists or cellists, but the full lyrical flood of Schumann’s Romanticism proved to suit the horn even better. It also showed immediately the infinite musical sensibilities of this duo, equally attuned each to the other and matched in virtuosity.
Simon Holt’s The Bell was written for them in 2022, its arresting opening – slightly spiky and precisely articulated – giving way to striking exchanges between the instruments with the glistening bell-like sounds at the top of the keyboard offering the perfect foil to the horn’s mellifluous phrases, its final clarion statement an almost defiant gesture.
