Tough Assignment Michelle Stebleton plays music for solo horn - and PAUL SARCICH is impressed '... both musical and technical satisfaction ...'

It takes a player of some confidence and experience to put out a disc of unaccompanied works, doubly so perhaps for the notoriously difficult French horn. Michelle Stebleton brings both to this enterprise, very much focussed on music of the 'test piece' variety, the booklet notes making frequent reference to the use of the pieces in competitions and the education of horn players. As Stebleton is heavily involved in this area (Associate Professor of Horn at Florida State University, clinician, lecturer, soloist, chamber musician and competition winner herself), the project makes sense, but is no less daunting as the implicit thought surely is that it should become a kind of reference disc for aspiring hornists. Tough assignment.

Stebleton presents her calling card right from the off, Vitaly Buyanovsky's España, a suitably evocative treatment of its title, with characteristic rhythms, Phrygian scales, fanfares in the 'trumpet real' style contrasted with lyrical muting and stopping; and plenty of ornamentation, tonguing and note-bending to keep things interesting...

FRENCH HORN

MALCOLM ARNOLD

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

MSR CLASSICS