DESCRIPTION:
Mozart: Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-Flat, K. 495
Dennis Brain with the Hallé Orchestra
Conducted by Malcolm Sargent and Laurence Turner

Recorded June 21, 1943, in Houldsworth Hall, Manchester, England, on Columbia 78-rpm matrices CAX 9104 through CAX 9107. First issued in England in August, 1943, as Columbia DX 1123 and DX 1124; this pair of records remained available until EMI's wholesale deletions of 78s occurred in 1959. In the USA, the set was issued in August, 1947, as Columbia Masterworks set MX-285 (records 72233-D and 72234-D); this is the issue that my transfer derives from.

The Mozart Horn Concerto No. 4 is in three movements:

1. Allegro moderato (Cadenza, by Norman del Mar, at 6:51)
2. Romanza: Andante (at 8:46)
3. Rondo: Allegro vivace (at 13:27)

Most sources claim that Laurence Turner, the concertmaster of the Hallé Orchestra, conducted the second and third movements. The story is told in Stephen Pettitt's "Dennis Brain: A Biography" (1976) that Sargent was late for the session, so Turner took over and recorded the second movement first, then the third, before Sargent arrived. However, the matrix numbers belie this alleged order of events. Columbia solved the problem of having multiple conductors by simply crediting the performance to "Dennis Brain and the Hallé Orchestra" - a solution that has frustrated record collectors ever since.