Beethoven & Krufft: Sonatas for Horn and Fortepiano

This collection of rarely recorded works for horn and fortepiano is performed by two rising stars on the international scene. The British natural horn soloist Anneke Scott, a regular performer with ensembles such as The English Baroque Soloists, created an exciting duo with Amsterdam Baroque’s keyboard player Kathryn Cok and this is their debut recording. Included on the disc are works by Krufft, Beethoven, Haydn, and Leidesdorf.

Anneke Scott is rapidly emerging as one of the outstanding younger exponents of the natural horn. She is currently principal horn of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, The English Baroque Soloists, and Harry Christopher’s Orchestra of the Sixteen. Through her work with the Etesian Ensemble she met the fortepianist Kathryn Cok with whom she formed a duo to play classical and romantic repertoire for horn and fortepiano. Kathryn Cok is also co-founder of the Caecilia-Concert, a group which specialises in performance and research of 17th century music for instruments and voices (and has also recorded for Challenge Classics).

Nicolaus von Krufft was a pupil of Johann Georg Albrechtsberger. His works include a vast number of sonatas, including the sonata for horn and fortepiano performed on this disc.

Beethoven composed his Sonata in Vienna in 1800 for the horn player Giovanni Punto during a concert tour by the highly talented young virtuoso. Although his name is mainly association with the publishers Leidesdorf und Sauer, Maximillian Joseph Leidesdorf was a prolific composer. His Sonata op. 164 was published in 1824. The Largo for horn and piano comes from Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet Hob II;74, known as the “Reiter-Quartett”.