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Today I received a most interesting note from Herb Winslow, associate principal horn, the Minnesota Orchestra, which he has granted me permission to quote. He is a regular reader of this blog, and I agree with him that
… your readers might be interested in performances that took place on March 2-4, 2007 by the Minnesota Orchestra. The piece was the Brahms German Requiem, the conductor was Roger Norrington, and the willing natural horn players were the other 4 members of the orchestra horn section, Michael Gast, Brian Jensen, Ellen Smith, and David Kamminga. Norrington did not suggest that the horns use natural instruments, but was enthusiastic about the idea when they volunteered that they would be interested in doing it on natural horns. A happy collision of the right conductor, composer and piece, and talented hornists. The effect, timbres, and colors obtained through the use of the valveless instruments really solidified for me why Brahms was the last major-composer holdout in his desire to use natural horns. He was absolutely right. It was an illuminating performance as to what we have lost through the use of our “modern” instruments. And not a word in any review about the natural horns or their “oddness”. The critics did relay the story, though, that Norrington started off the week telling the strings that if they were contemplating giving something up for Lent, perhaps it could be vibrato! 🙂
As I am a natural horn fan and a Norrington fan this must have been a fascinating performance! I know that when I perform works of this type I often think about what it would be like to perform them as originally intended based on the notated part. In terms of Brahms, he is clearly thinking natural horn in all of his works. Bravo to the horns of the Minnesota Orchestra, and thanks to Herb Winslow for sharing about the performance.
