Dennis Brain
Other composers who wrote for him include Malcolm Arnold, Lennox Berkeley, Alan Bush, Gordon Jacob, Humphrey Searle and Mátyás Seiber.
His mother, Marion, née Beeley (1887–1954), was a singer at Covent Garden and his father, Aubrey Harold Brain, was first horn of the London Symphony Orchestra and regarded as "the leading exponent of the instrument in Britain at that time".
[n 1] Brain's elder brother, Leonard (1915–1975), became a leading player of the oboe and cor anglais,[3] principal of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Brain was allowed to blow a few notes on his father's horn every Saturday morning, to maintain his interest, but his first musical studies were piano and organ.
[8] He appeared with ensembles including the Griller and Busch quartets and made broadcasts for the BBC, the first of which, in February 1939, featured Mozart's Divertimento in D (K334) with Aubrey as first horn and Dennis as second.
Unlike Germany and Italy, Britain did not exempt musicians from conscription, but the conductor of the Central Band of the Royal Air Force, Wing Commander Rudolph O'Donnell, made considerable, and largely successful, efforts to ensure that, as Walter Legge put it, "every exceptionally able young instrumentalist knew that a place would be found for him in the RAF Band".
[12] In mid-1942 Brain met the composer Benjamin Britten; the latter was writing incidental music, played by the RAF orchestra, for a series of BBC radio commentaries on war-time Britain which were being broadcast weekly to the US.
[10] Brain was principal horn in both, playing for Beecham alongside the woodwind players dubbed "the Royal Family" – Jack Brymer (clarinet), Gwydion Brooke (bassoon), Terence MacDonagh (oboe), and Gerald Jackson (flute).
It had a custom lead pipe which was narrower than the usual, and offered a sound which, if not comparable to the Raoux, at least gave a nod in the direction of the lighter French instrument.
[22] In November 1953, under the direction of Herbert von Karajan, and accompanied by the Philharmonia, Brain recorded the four Mozart Horn Concertos for Columbia.
[23] In the same month, together with Sidney Sutcliffe (oboe), Bernard Walton (clarinet) and Cecil James (bassoon), he recorded Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds.
[24] In July 1954, again conducted by Karajan, Brain played the organ part in a recording of the Easter hymn from Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.
[23] Of Brain's other recordings, Legge singled out his playing in the four Brahms Symphonies conducted by Otto Klemperer, Mozart's B flat Divertimento with Karajan and Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, "the horn-player's opera par excellence!
