Jacques-François Gallay was a French horn player prominent in the middle of the 19th century, inspiring one reviewer of the time to write that he “cannot conceive of the horn without M. Gallay”. Playing the natural horn takes an already complex and difficult instrument and ratchets up the difficulty several notches. Unlike the more modern, valved instrument, notes are changed by lip tension or by hand-stopping. With a minefield of intonation and projection issues to navigate, Anneke Scott performs this repertoire with astonishing ease. 

However, this third volume of Gallay’s music performed by Scott doesn’t quite live up to previous discs. This has nothing to do with the playing and more to do with the music itself. Operatic fantasias are not the most substantial of genres. While they were perfect for the travelling virtuoso to show off back in the day (opera’s big tunes, combined with lots of notes!), by the time it reaches the present the music has to stand on its own.

There’s an attempt to get around this issue by having soprano Lucy Crowe perform some of the original arias by Donizetti and Mercadante. While successful, they’re only a small portion of the disc. Hector Berlioz wrote of a performance of Gallay’s that “we would have much preferred to hear him… play a piece composed for him, rather than this collection of cavatinas”. The same holds true in the 21st century.

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