Parforce Ensemble
You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced a Parforce horn troupe up close! This ensemble from St. Hubert, Belgium, performing the Messe de St. Hubert, keeps alive a centuries-old tradition. Be sure to turn up the volume for the full effect of the natural horn’s boisterous cousin.
Timbre and Taste
by Jeffrey Snedeker
As many of you also know, the natural horn has been an important part of my musical life and career, beginning with sharing First Place in the Natural Horn Division (with Javier Bonet) of the American Horn Competition (now the International Horn Competition of America) almost 25 years ago. The pursuit of this instrument has had an interesting effect on the following:
- my performing in general, including an influence on technique and musical decisions;
- my teaching, which has adjusted to include student experiences with the instrument;
- my recital repertoire, ranging from the earliest Baroque pieces to new pieces for the instrument
- my concept of the aesthetic of pieces that call for the instrument, historical or contemporary;
This last item, my concept of the aesthetic of the pieces that include the instrument, is the one that has been on my mind recently, especially after hearing a range of live and recorded performances that provoke a question: when composers wrote notes that require some sort of hand-stopping, what should those notes sound like?
The approach to stopped timbres has two obvious extremes, both of which we hear in public and on recordings. One is to bring the volume of the stopped notes up to that of the open notes in a passage, most frequently creating a raspy timbre like a “modern” stopped sound. The second is to do the opposite, to modify the volume of open notes that the timbre is more even and the changes are subtler. The 18th- and 19th-century methods that comment on timbre generally encourage the second way, yet many modern performers, for whatever reasons, seem to choose the first way.
Natural Horn Playing Now and Forty Years Ago
by Ab Koster
When I started playing the natural horn in 1970, musicians who played original instruments were extremely rare. In Vienna in the late 1950’s, Nikolaus Harnoncourt founded his group called “Concentus Musicus Wien.” They started with only strings, and he conducted the group from his cello chair. Harnoncourt had close contact with some Dutch musicians – Gustav Leonhardt, Frans Brüggen, and Anner Bijlsma. Frans Brüggen and Anner Bijlsma were teaching at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague, where I studied.
Together with Frans Vester, the flute player of the famous Danzi Woodwind Quintet, they inspired me to start playing on the natural horn. At the same time, I won a Dutch prize (“Prix d’Excellence”) that gave me the opportunity to make several recordings for Dutch radio. I was so inspired by the idea of playing natural horn that I proposed, after recording the Schumann Adagio and Allegro and the Dukas Villanelle, to play the Beethoven Sonata on natural horn next time. The only problem was that I had no instrument.
I started to study with Hermann Baumann in 1971 for the “Konzertexamen” in Essen, and he advised me to order a copy made by Meinl and Lauber in Geretsried near Munich. At the same time, I started to practice natural horn on my single Bb Alexander, which had an F crook at the thumb valve for the low notes. (Almost everybody played a single Bb horn back then in Holland, just as Dennis Brain, Peter Damm, and Alan Civil did in those days.)
Just in time before the recording, I received my Meinl and Lauber copy. It was a copy of a Huschauer, a Baroque instrument with a rather large bell. My colleagues in the Residentie Orchestra (my first full-time position) started laughing when they saw me with that natural horn. Everyone thought it was just a nice attempt that would end soon.
Experiences and Strategies in Teaching
by Frøydis Ree Wekre
I believe in music as a wonderful human art form with great impact for a better life. I do also believe strongly in the importance of the best possible teaching for all pupils and students. What, then, characterises good teaching, as the students experience it, and as results arise? How can each and every one of us improve our teaching skills? Maybe we could open up between our studios to a larger degree, and exchange our ideas and philosophies and tricks of the trade - not only between horn players, but also including teachers of other instruments, when relevant? While waiting for this to happen, I am happy to share some of my own thoughts on teaching here. These points were originally notes for a lecture.
Teaching, in my experience, is about sharing information, encouraging, inspiring, helping, and trusting the potential.
To me, teaching feels like a pleasant obligation, a sort of “payback” to my own teachers. In earlier years I mostly trusted my instincts, but nowadays I am more conscious about what to do - or not to do - in the various teaching situations. Experience can help, if we reflect upon it.
A Lesson with Herman Jeurissen
The standard of horn playing is nowadays far higher than it was at the beginning of my career. Through the media we have access to fantastic recordings, to knowledge about the many physical aspects of horn playing (embouchure, air control, body posture etc.) and to a lot of tools giving support to the mental aspects of stage performance.
There is however a reverse side to the medal. The equality in approach and sound ideal lead too many times to a humdrum uniformity. What is the deep sense of worldwide concert tours as almost all the orchestras sound more or less the same? Like in nature we absolutely need biodiversity. We should realize that in art, copies have basically hardly any value. With all the free modern media, we make ourselves completely superfluous, if we not are playing with a strong personal, not interchangeable, touch. All the available tools concerning developing embouchure, air control and mental stability are without any doubt very helpful, but at the end just tools. The ultimate goal is of course a unique, genuine expressive and musically eloquent presentation.
West Eastern Divan Orchestra
With this month's E-Newsletter being focused on horn playing from the Middle East, we thought it might be nice to hear these musicians, as well as read about them. Here is a live broadcast from the 2014 BBC Proms of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an orchestra of young professionals from Israel and Palestine, brought together by conductor Daniel Barenboim. Enjoy--especially the Ravel Pavane (starting at about the 44 minute mark), beautifully played by principal horn Jorge Monte de Fez! Click the image to see the video on YouTube.
A few words from a horn player from The (Arab) Gulf…
by Peter Davida
Everything started in 2007, on a typically wet and humid day, driving on the highway in Malaysia’s main city of Kuala Lumpur, when one of my Hungarian friends from the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra called me to say not to hesitate any longer, but rather send in my application for the principal horn job of the yet-to-be-founded Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra. (Qatar is a tiny peninsula in the Persian or Arab Gulf. It shares a land border with Saudi Arabia and sea borders with Bahrain and Iran. The population exceeds 2 million people (most of them foreigners from all over the world.)
I was more then keen to make a change in my life; frankly speaking, I’d had enough of Malaysia after spending ten years there. I reached the limits of my tolerance when it came to coping with the local lifestyle and culture. I felt I was trapped there. I’d had enough of the orchestra as well and wanted something different. I was looking for a place where I could find enthusiasm, affection, less of the lukewarm MPO performances. (Everything was so different in the first five years of the orchestra - it was a real treat to be part of it. We were often described as the best orchestra in Asia (excluding Australia ;->) We played magnificent concerts with various famous soloists and conductors, but the magic - at least for me - was reduced to four or five good concerts per year by the end of my ten years there.)
I aimed for Europe. I wanted to be European again, be a part of it. I missed my culture, history, the colors, the vibe. I had enough of the "stupidity" in general. I tried to avoid sinking in a society in which I didn’t belong. After three auditions in a row, I ended up winning another exotic principal job, this time in Qatar. Bye bye European dreams...
I will never forget the dirty room with the "honky-tonk" piano at the Cairo Hilton at my audition. It was impossible to tune to it. My tuning slide fell on the carpet playing half way through the intro of Strauss 1! I also remember that the jury asked at the end of my last excerpt: "What the hell do you want to do in Qatar? Do you know the place? Do you really want to live there?"
