by Layne Anspach

This month’s Chamber Music Corner will look at Frédéric Duvernoy’s Trio No. 1 for violin, horn, and piano. Frédéric Duvernoy (1765-1838) was a horn player, teacher, and composer. He was the first horn faculty member at the Paris Conservatory, teaching there from 1795 until 1815. A prolific performer, Duvernoy was a member of the Orchestre de la Garde Nationale and the Orchestre de l’Opéra de Paris. His playing caught the ear of Napolean who appointed him to the imperial chapel. While not exclusively so, most of his compositional output includes horns.

Trio No. 1 for violin, horn, and piano started as a set of three works named Trois Trios Concertante. The work is a two-movement piece, where the first movement, Adagio–Cantabile, starts with a short adagio and a piano cadenza. The movement proper begins with piano support and a horn melody. The violin follows, restating the melody. A brief B section begins with a piano melody using horn and violin as supporting voices. The piano takes on more of the melody than in the initial presentation but finally brings the movement back to a truncated A section which again features the horn. The movement fades away, setting up the second movement.

Allegretto, has a lively and free style in rondo form. The A theme is presented by the horn with piano accompaniment. The violin follows, repeating this theme. A second theme, heard first in the horn, has a snappy feel with frequent dotted rhythms. The violin plays the melody in turn with melodic fragmentation in the piano. The A theme returns in an abbreviated form prior to the third melody, again first heard in the horn but with violin runs accompanying. As expected, the violin follows the horn melody with the new thematic material. The first theme returns, again as an abbreviated version. A short coda brings the work to an exciting conclusion, and these performers recorded an unmarked quicker tempo.

The reference recording comes from the album Horn Trios (Berlin Classics), and the hornist is Felix Klieser.

by Inman Hebert

Students can be guilty of relegating music history to the classroom. In a grade-incentivized academic system, cramming for exams and exiling material not being tested in the near future to the back of our minds becomes very easy. Regardless of outcomes (grades), cramming may cause us to dismiss the relevance of musicological concepts to careers in music. College professors, at this point, would ask students to fully embrace—integrate and apply—their curricula. So why and how do we apply music history to our playing?

We can look to period-instrument specialists and their studies for inspiration. Horn players from around the globe study and perform solos, chamber music, and symphonic music on natural horn. While we can never replicate any musical era with complete accuracy, experts in this practice strive for a high degree of authenticity in both the unique timbres of the original instruments and in their historically-informed styles of performance.

Given the natural horn’s limitations, not every horn player desires to study the instrument. For the longest time, I falsely categorized natural horn playing as completely separate from the modern valved traditions. As such, I dismissed its potential to influence my musical ideas. Learning how the two are inextricably linked, particularly with relation to the performance of repertoire originally written for those instruments, opened up new possibilities. (The Paris Conservatory tradition of the nineteenth century required that students practice both natural and valved horn techniques…but this is information for another article.)

Taking inspiration from the natural horn by performing its repertoire can aid our growth into more mature musicians. Using a Mozart horn concerto as an example, we can examine which notes would have been open, covered, stopped, etc. on the natural horn and gain insights into Mozart’s intentions for phrase structures, color and nuance, and even humor. Moreover, we can look at generalized musical trends in the Classical period, such as beats one and three almost always serving as strong metrical points, to further guide us in phrasing.

Professors share their expertise so that students may have epiphanies to internalize and which, sometimes, revolutionize one’s approach to performing music. Originally, I chased one identity, one sound concept, and one way of performance, but I later realized that a defining trait of musical development is adaptability. The study of each piece relative to its musicological context provides us with the knowledge to better understand the composer and performance practices of an era, and, thereby, to create a more nuanced and relevant performance.

If we decide to break from historical trends, the decision should be a conscious one based on context and steeped in knowledge. As developing musicians, we have an obligation to study the history of our instruments and its repertoire, not for the purposes of replicating the past but rather to allow the past to inform our present.

Krzysztof Penderecki—Capriccio per Radovan

by Wojciech Kamionka

Krzysztof Penderecki (photo by Jakub Ociepa)

Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020)—Polish composer and pedagogue, and Rector of the Academy of Music in Kraków from 1972 to 1987—in his various compositions, dedicated a notable number of solos to the horn. As examples, he wrote long solos for horn on-stage and off-stage in Credo (1997-98) in the movement Crucifixus, as well in his Symphony No. 7 “Seven Gates of Jerusalem” (1996), commissioned for the 3000-year anniversary of the city of Jerusalem. This work was premiered in Jerusalem on January 9, 1997. The orchestra included members of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lorin Maazel. The horn part was performed by Will Sanders of the Bavarian Radio Symphony, and he will come in-person for the IHS 58 Symposium in Kraków.

The composer welcomed the 21st century with a chamber music work, Sextet for clarinet, horn, string trio, and piano (2000). The world premiere of the work took place in the Vienna Musikverein, the concert hall famous for the “New Year with the Vienna Philharmonic” concerts. From the all-star team of musicians, the horn part was performed by Radovan Vlatkovic who worked closely with the composer on the part. The extraordinary fruit of that relationship came in 2008 when Penderecki composed his Horn Concerto Winterreise, dedicated to Vlatkovic. The concerto is 17-18 minutes long, and in it, the composer exploited the most beautiful qualities of horn: deep expression of sound, long phrasing, intimacy, sometimes brutality and power, and the colors of both muted and stopped horn. The inspiration of the title Winterreise (Winter Journey) came more from the season spent composing the work and travelling in winter than from the famous song cycle of Franz Schubert. The work has notable recordings by Radovan Vlatkovic with the Sinfonietta Cracovia of Kraków and again with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jennifer Montone with the Warsaw National Philharmonic, and Katerina Javurkova with the Sinfonia Iuventus. The work is also available with a piano reduction; it is published by Edition Schott.

Additionally, Penderecki composed several short virtuosic pieces dedicated to notable soloists. In 2012, he composed Capriccio per Radovan “Il sogno di un cacciatore” per corno solo, a piece again dedicated to Radovan Vlatkovic. The Italian title translates as “A Hunter's Dream,” and the work starts strangely with an imitation of snoring! In the dreams of a sleeping hunter, a horn player sounds themes from Penderecki’s works as well as those of other composers. The piece ends with one of the most famous motifs for horn, the call from the Hunters’ Chorus from Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz. Capriccio is also published by Edition Schott.

Capriccio is the obligatory piece in the IHS Premier Soloist Competition at IHS 58 in Kraków. I believe it will be interesting to hear several different interpretations, and personally, I wonder if the younger generation will interpret Capriccio more as a dramatic work or as a comic piece? or perhaps we will be surprised!