It might be time for a CD review today.

Meh, let's do one anyways... This one's called Screamers: Difficult Works For The Horn, but you know I need to be eccentric, so this gets filed as Rand Steiger's Hexadecathlon: "A New-Slain Knight". It's a recital CD from horn player John Cerminaro.

One of the performances on the disk is a Joseph Haydn divertimento for horn, violin, and cello--oddly, with Mr. Cerminaro's wife Charlotte taking care of the horn duties. The Haydn piece highlights a peculiar problem that's been on my mind since I read some concert review in the New York Times a few months ago: the horn's sound isn't a good companion for most instruments and doesn't blend well in chamber music settings. Even when played softly, the big round thing has a penetrating sound that dominates other instruments played at the same volume. While it's ordinarily a comfortable fit for brass quintets, even the most sensitive musician can't really get a horn to fit in with a couple of stringed instruments.

So one way to listen to this album is as several composers' attempts to solve the puzzle of how you get a horn as a solo instrument to work amicably with chamber groups. Robert Kraft's "Evening Voluntaries" and Henri Lazarof's "Intrada" may not really be part of this puzzle--they're both for unaccompanied horn. And whaddaya know, they're difficult pieces! Each is filled with efforts to explore the technique and sonorities of the horn-player's repertoire, but neither will inspire you with its beauty nor excitement. Mr. Cerminaro does excellent work, but there isn't a lot to work with.

The disk actually opens with much better news. Robert Schumann's "Adagio And Allegro" for horn and piano. I'm not a big fan of overtly romantic music like his, but this piece is gorgeously tuneful and solves that little balance problem by simply letting the horn lead at all times while the piano is strictly second. The title track is something of a three-movement chamber concerto, featuring an ecletic ensemble of instruments and marvelous use of percussion to solve that pesky horn's sound (the piccolo helps, too). Based largely on a motif that recalls a hunting horn, it's enjoyable, if still fiendishly difficult.

Mr. and Mrs. Cerminaro both play beautifully, and he's clearly up to the challenges of what are obviously virtuoso works. The other musicians on the disk are up to this level, too, especially the California EAR Unit in the Steiger work.

7 out of 10

CDs listened to doay:

• Paula Diehl: Right Of Way
• David Maslanka: Symphony No. 7
• Redd Kross: Phaseshifter
• Test Icicles: For Screening Purposes Only
• Krzysztof Penderecki: Concerto For Violin