Music: Young Man with a Horn

To a sympathetic audience, a French-horn player is often the object of grave solicitude. Even the best of them sometimes lip up confidently for a Wagnerian horn call only to burble or clonk out a sound like a moose cough. One man who rarely burbles or clonks on the most unpredictable of orchestra instruments is England's Dennis Brain. At 32, Brain (no kin to Winston Churchill's physician —see FOREIGN NEWS) is Britain's best horn player, and last week he showed off his skill in one of the rare pieces written for horn.

The occasion was a music festival run by Composer Benjamin...