French horn
Jasper Rees
Sarah Willis's day job is as a member of the horn section of the Berlin Philharmonic. In recent years she has also become a roving ambassador for the instrument and a familiar face presenting and interviewing on the Berlin Phil's Digital Concert Hall. In 2010 she released her first solo recording, of the Brahms trio for horn, violin and piano. That combination of instruments is once more the foundation for her second solo CD. But there all similarities end.Horn Discoveries migrates from blues to classical contemporary, stopping off in light romantic territory on the way. There is also a Read more ...
Roger Montgomery
Horn concertos don't make frequent appearances in the standard concert repertory and when they do it will usually be a work by Mozart or Richard Strauss. It wouldn't be entirely true to say that horn players feel keenly the lack of a serious core of works such as that available to pianists, string players and singers. This is partly because of the wealth of sumptuous orchestral writing which allows the horn to shine from the back of the orchestra at key moments without requiring it to carry the entire performance, and also owing to the small number of significant solo works by some great Read more ...
Jasper Rees
When a book is published, there are broadly speaking three alternative fates which lie in wait. It goes global, it sinks without trace, or it sells modestly and steadily to the readership for whom it was intended. There is, however, another potential option, which is that it catches a thermal and veers off in an unforeseen direction.In 2008 my book I Found My Horn was published. It told of my fractured association with a musical instrument I learned for seven years in my youth, which I then resumed on the brink of my forties. I gave myself a target: at the end of the year I had to stand up in Read more ...
philip radcliffe
“How tired we are of travelling,” the soprano sings, underscored by a solo horn. The end is near: “Is this perhaps death?” No fuss, no drama, but weariness and a calm acceptance. Since Strauss and his wife Pauline were in their eighties and living quietly in Switzerland when he wrote Four Last Songs, it is clear that they had come to terms with their inevitable demise. In the end musically, Strauss pays touching tribute to his wife, the soprano, and to his father, Franz, the horn player. Throughout, we have the soaring vocal line supported by the brass. Here, that combination reaches its Read more ...
theartsdesk
Claudio Abbado became the Principal Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1989 and continued his association with the world's most illustrious orchestra until very recently. Two members of the Berlin Phil's famous horn section share their memories of playing under the modest maestro.FERGUS McWILLIAMI am of the generation who in late 1989 elected Claudio Abbado to succeed Herbert von Karajan. I remember him being quoted by some journalist as having said (years before) that whoever followed HvK would be a "transition conductor". Ironic that it should turn out to be himself. He was truly Read more ...
David Nice
Now this is what I call an orchestra showing off: you unleash four of your horns on the most insanely difficult yet joyous of sinfoniettas for accompanied horn quartet, Schumann’s Konzertstück, and later let the other four light the brightest of candles on the enormous, rainbow-dyed cake of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. How they battled it out between them for who did what I can't imagine, but both groups covered themselves with glory.It’s also extremely good concert planning when horn-drenched early romantic extroversion, guided with unflagging energy and focus by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Ramon Humet – Niwa - Chamber Works London Sinfonietta/Nicholas Collon (Neu Records)Ramon Humet's Four Zen Gardens opens this arresting compilation; nine short movements for three percussionists. A solitary rainstick adds a splash of aqueous colour to the metallic textures, dominated by vibraphone and gongs. The music feels static, ritualistic, recalling John Cage's Ryoanji. You're curious about how it's been notated, the effect seeming both improvised and carefully structured. The quiet fade is haunting. Humet was born in Barcelona in 1968 but it's no surprise to read that he now lives in an Read more ...
philip radcliffe
What Manchester has today, Vienna will have tomorrow. The BBC Phil’s composer/conductor HK “Nali” Gruber is taking his musicians and singers back home to the Wiener Konzerthaus to reprise this concert next week. You can’t fault it for variety – Stravinsky, Britten and MacMillan, Gruber’s predecessor as composer/conductor here. But the main thrust is celebrating Stravinsky. It is the centenary of The Rite of Spring. In the BBC Phil’s series of celebratory concerts, we here came to his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, also premiered in Paris, in 1927. It hasn’t been heard in Manchester for nearly 20 Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: The Six Cello Suites Peter Wispelwey (Evil Penguin Records) Bach’ s Cello Suites remained stubbornly off-limits to me until I read Eric Siblin’s affectionate, rambling book, The Cello Suites: In Search of a Baroque Masterpiece. I’m now a convert; after overdosing on thick orchestral sludge we all need a palate cleanser, and these six solo suites do the job beautifully. Like many, I got to know these works through Pierre Fournier’s elegant 1960s cycle. You soon find yourself acquiring, imperceptibly, other sets. You won't get bored of hearing this music. Dutch cellist Peter Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It’s a sadness to all lovers of the French horn that Mozart’s four horn concertos, the product of his longest friendship, make their appearance all too rarely in the concert hall. Though the building blocks of the repertoire, perhaps their apparent frivolity counts against them. But last night the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its principal horn Roger Montgomery brought out of mothballs the best-known concerto, K495, and planted it in the middle of a programme celebrating Mozart the entertainer.First up was Symphony no 36, K 425, dashed off on the way back from Salzburg in 1782, Read more ...
graham.rickson
Mozart: Piano Concertos no 6, 8 and 9 Angela Hewitt (piano), Orchestra da Camera di Mantova (Hyperion)This first volume in Angela Hewitt’s projected Mozart concerto series deserves praise for featuring three early pieces, instead of starting with the better-known mature works. Which isn’t a slight on these three concertos, each of which sounds like fully-formed Mozart, particularly the Concerto no 9, written when the composer was 20. Rather than a work made up of solos interspersed with tutti passages, piano and orchestra feel inseparable here, the piano making a cheeky entrance within Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The business of setting musical records does not normally have much to do with actual music. The longest an oboeist can play with circular breathing, the fastest piccolo player, the highest note sung by a human etc – these are not about music-making. A record of a rather more impressive order is due to be attempted at the Royal Opera House on Sunday, 23 October. The largest number of French horns ever gathered in one place will attempt to make music together.Not just any music, mind. The arrangement they will be performing is the opening of the Ring cycle, the hauntingly atmospheric Read more ...