sun 08/12/2024

French horn

Classical CDs Weekly: Borgström, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Alec Frank-Gemmill

 Borgström: Violin Concerto, Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 Eldbjørg Hemsing (violin), Wiener Symphoniker/Olari Elts (BIS)Hjalmar Borgström sounds like the name of a BBC Four gumshoe, a melancholy detective solving crimes in downtown...

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Radically different: Horn player Anneke Scott on The Prince Regent's Band

The Prince Regent’s Band was formed in 2013 and, like very many chamber ensembles, was created when a group of us found that we shared a number of interests in common. The musicians that make up the ensemble are all specialist historic brass players...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Horn-player Alec Frank-Gemmill

Traditional musical formats rarely suit the individual talent, but the highly-motivated player always finds a way. I first got to talk to Alec Frank-Gemmill in the very sociable surroundings of the Pärnu Festival in Estonia, a gathering most...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Chopin, Glass, Alec Frank-Gemmill

 Chopin: Mazurkas Ivana Gavric (Edition Classics)Ivana Gavric suggests that Chopin’s Mazurkas are “short, poignant, diary entries”, and her performances remind us how the greatest composers are never constrained when writing miniatures. As with...

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Frank-Gemmill, SCO, Manze, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh

March 2017 is MacMillan month in Scotland – well, in Glasgow at least, with certain events spilling over into Edinburgh and other cities too. It’s not as if we don’t already get to hear quite a bit of Sir James’s music north of the border, but it’s...

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Jim Rattigan's Pavillon, Seven Arts, Leeds

French horn players active in jazz are thin on the ground: there’s the long-deceased John Graas, and composer and polymath Gunther Schuller’s career took in collaborations with Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. Unlike most brass instruments, the horn...

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BBC Young Musician 2016

What makes a musical performance? The final of Young Musician 2016 presented five judges with this philosophical teaser to ponder. For the previous 90 minutes three contestants with three radically contrasting styles of delivery cleared every bar in...

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'Paul said he would like orchestral instruments. John couldn’t be bothered'

A decade ago I was sent to interview George Martin and his son Giles about Love, the remarkable remix of the Beatles catalogue which they created for Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles show in Las Vegas. After the interview proper, in which both talked...

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We Made It: Horn Maker Tom Fisher

Ask anyone for the name of a violin or piano maker, and they’ll probably be able to summon up Stradivarius and Steinway. What about horns? Do concertgoers ever look closely at these instruments – noticing, perhaps, that some have four, others five...

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theartsdesk at the East Neuk Festival: Church strings, garden horns

A peninsular spirit of place and the greatest of instrumentalists drew me a second time to the eastern nook (hence the “Neuk”) of Fife. But could a second report for theartsdesk be justified – wasn’t the premise the same for the 11th East Neuk...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Mozart, Poulenc

 Bach: St John Passion Berliner Philharmoniker, Members of the Rudfunkchors Berlin, Soloists/Sir Simon Rattle, with staging by Peter Sellars (Berliner Philharmoniker)You'd happily settle for an audio recording of Sir Simon Rattle's version of...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Konstantia Gourzi, Ravel, Sarah Willis

Konstantia Gourzi: Music for piano and string quartet (ECM)You rather hope you'll bump into and make the acquaintance of the Greek composer Konstantia Gourzi. And that she'll be sufficiently impressed by the force of your personality that she'll...

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