Ab Koster, Tafelmusik, Bruno Weil - Mozart: Rondo & Horn Concertos (1993)

“…The concertos are taken almost in chronological order: K371, K417, then K447 preceding K495 although it is actually later, and lastly K412. Ab Koster is a very accomplished player on the natural horn, with a sure hand technique (needed to obtain the notes not in the harmonic series); the stopped notes are often very lightly coloured, though sometimes Koster uses hand stopping to emphasize a chromatic or unexpected note. He plays quite coolly, with occasional touches of wit (which Mozart often invites), with some delicacy of timing, and often gracefully for example in the Romance of K447, the finest of the slow movements. I like, too, his broad phrasing in the first movement of that concerto; there is a pleasant spaciousness to his playing throughout. He takes the high passages and the running semiquavers (for example in the K495 first movement) calmly in his stride. He supplies good cadenzas of his own; the one in K447 seems to take note of the resemblance between the secondary theme of the movement and that of the Piano Concerto, K467. Tafelmusik produce a pleasantly luminous string texture...” -- Stanley Sadie