Archived under: Pet Peeves | Recordings
Listen to Recordings
Another pet peeve for many horn teachers is horn students that don’t listen to recordings. While I would like to think that all horn teachers share this pet peeve, actually, there are a few horn teachers that don’t push their students to listen to recordings and want them to develop their own interpretations independently through analysis. Which is a nice thought in a way–composers markings are very important to understand–but if you have never listened to a Mozart concerto or Beethoven 3 there is just no way you can get it right if you approach the music like an etude.
High-level preparation of any work among other things requires listening to multiple recordings. There are at this point in time many recordings basically any solo or orchestral excerpt you will need to study. My list of “must own” solo recordings may be found here. Also there is the popular online resource hornexcerpts.org, which has music and multiple recordings (for free!) of many of the most standard horn excerpts. There is a place for etude preparation but don’t come in to a lesson playing excerpts and solos like etudes. Always get at least one recording in your ear, it will help a great deal in achieving the proper style.
A final note to my students; if you can’t find a recording of something you are trying to prepare, ask me and I will loan you one.
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