Nobuaki Fukukawa’s latest release is Mozart’s complete horn concertos. It is well known that Mozart composed these concertos for his great friend, Joseph Leutgeb, and now Fukukawa has recorded these works with his great friend, Masato Suzuki. The recording was made at Suntory Hall in February 2021.
Fukukawa: In a way, this was also a by-product of the Covid-19 pandemic. I was asked whether I had a project I wanted to realize in Suntory Hall, as there had been a cancellation. I decided immediately that I wanted to record Mozart’s horn concertos. This had been a dream of mine for some time.
Astonishingly, Fukukawa had only a month to prepare the music and to put together an orchestra for the recording sessions. He immediately asked Masato Suzuki to conduct, and he gathered the players mainly from among his colleagues in the NHK Symphony Orchestra, including concertmaster Kei Shirai.
Fukukawa: Masato and I are the same age, and our first meeting was as composer and performer. I had commissioned him to write a new piece for horn; this was the beginning of our fruitful relationship, and we have since performed together on various occasions since.
In addition to the four concertos, the disc contains the Concert-Rondo K. 371.
Fukukawa: Music fans will no doubt be familiar with the stories regarding Mozart’s horn concertos which were written for his friend, hornist Joseph Leutgeb (1732-1811). By all accounts, they were very good friends; in the autograph score, for example, one can see Mozart’s teasing scribbles to him. It has, likewise, been a great joy for me to record these works with my musical friends.
Fukukawa says, “if Leutgeb gave the premiere of the horn concertos, Mozart himself most likely would have conducted and may have even joined in with the orchestra on the keyboard and done things to make the soloist giggle.”
One of the unique features of this complete Mozart set is that the cadenzas which were specially written for this recording by contemporary composers, including the cadenza for No. 4 (by Dai Fujikura), Concert-Rondo (by Miho Hazama), and No. 3 (by project conductor Masato Suzuki). As you will hear on the disc, each cadenza is distinctly characteristic of its composer.
Fukukawa: The cadenza by Fujikura makes use of the horn’s harmonic series, so it can also be played on the natural horn. In Suzuki’s cadenza, the harpsichord bursts in, which is perhaps how Mozart and Leutgeb might have done if they had performed together. Miho Hazama’s cadenza displays her unique vision of the world, but within that, she incorporates a Mozartian world. Frankly, I was amazed that we were able to assemble such a variety of cadenzas on such short notice.
The complete recording is available here: https://music.apple.com/us/album/mozart-horn-concertos-nos-1-4/1577498935
