Watkins, Huw: Lament

During the summer of 2020, Huw Watkins and Ben Goldscheider recorded Lament, a new work for horn and piano written by Huw especially for a new CD they recorded together. "When Ben Goldscheider asked me to write a new piece for a CD celebrating the legacy of Dennis Brain, I immediately thought of Poulenc’s Elégie (written in memory of Brain) and its juxtaposition of violent anger and lyrical beauty, and felt I wanted to do something similar. Lament begins quietly, with long, expressive horn lines emerging from a web of piano harmony. At its climax, the horn writing becomes anguished, accompanied by increasingly dissonant piano chords, before a muted return to the opening music, the harmony less consoling now." – Huw Watkins