Mozart's Horn Concertos are perhaps the most popular works ever written for the instrument. This new album is a collection of all the works Mozart wrote for his lifelong friend, the horn player Joseph Leutgeb (17321811), one of the foremost players of his day. In these five works Mozart captures the public persona of an instrument most readily associated with all things hunting, but he also brings it indoors: lyrical episodes, and especially the slow movements, show the very soul of the instrument, despite any perceived limitations of the valve-less horn. Leutgeb must indeed have been a worthy recipient of these fine works. His modern successor is natural horn player Pip Eastop, whose technical ability and musical inventiveness are palpable in these hugely enjoyable renditions. He is accompanied by The Hanover Band and Tony Halstead (who has also provided an ending for the unfinished K417, Horn Concerto No 2 in E flat major). Review You will have to go a long way to hear such a refined legato as Eastop achieves. With lucid input from the Hanover Band and from the Eroica Quartet in the Quintet, these performances have a musical integrity over and above historical interest. --Gramophone, Jan'15 This is a clear winner of a disc destined to bring many a smile through the winter gloom. IRR OUTSTANDING. IRR,Jan'15..... Word has been trickling in from record stores of a secret bestseller that has taken off among the regulars the customers who have absolutely everything on record and need special persuasion to part with another  or $. The release that is swallowing their spare cash is a production of Mozart's four horn concertos played on original instruments. The soloist plays a so-called natural horn, a big round bit of tin that is about as organic as cow dung on a turnip. Whether it s musical is another matter. Past attempts to perform Mozart on natural horn have kept digital editors on their toes, weeding out toilet noises. No one ever expected it to match the recorded glories of a Dennis Brain or a Barry Tuckwell on full brass blare. The miracle here is how close Pip Eastop comes to making you forget he s on a no-valve horn. There is scarcely a quavery note in the four concertos, accompanied in lively tempo by the Hanover Band and Anthony Halstead, himself a virtuoso on the natural horn. And the quintet, performed with members of the Eroica Quartet, is even more convincing playing of uncompromising perfection and a fair degree of fantasy. You could easily listen to this quintet without knowing it's organic. --Sinfini Music, 7/2//15 If you thought period performances were getting more conventional, think again. Pip Eastop plays Mozart's four horn concertos on a modern copy of an 1830 natural horn with an astonishing variety of noises at his command bleats, whoops, roars and croaks, sometimes all in a single phrase, like a farmyard chorus. Cadenzas, especially, are wild and wacky. The Hanover Band conducted by Anthony Halstead make comparatively well-behaved colleagues and the Eroica Quartet join Eastop for a performance of Mozart's Horn Quintet to complete an entertaining programme. **** --Ft, 24/1/15