It wasn’t my original plan, but when I saw that today would have been Dennis Brain’s 99th birthday it seemed as though I ought to have him playing something.
This popped up when I went looking and it is – unusually – a video of him playing. He does a little demonstration of the differences between the (natural) horn that Beethoven was probably most familiar with and a modern (well modern-ish as it is a number of years ago now) horn.
The Beethoven Sonata for Horn and Piano is definitely not easy to play, but he does make it sound pretty effortless. I think I can safely say that I didn’t ever manage to perform it quite this well 