Natural Horn at the 1989 SWRHW

The fourth of five archive videos I just converted to DVD from the 1989 Southwest Regional Horn Workshop is of the session by Kristin Thelander on the natural horn.

She gave a great session. Not that it is a competition or anything at any workshop, but this one did especially catch my attention and will be one we will watch in the horn repertoire class. One of my currently shelved writing projects actually is a natural horn book, and she covered the ground very well in introducing the instrument to the audience. One thing I strongly agreed with was to start with exercises. Students always want to start with solos, but really they need to get a little technique under their hands (or “the hand in the bell” in this case) before moving on. Her personal process she explained was to imagine that she was a student of Gallay and to work through the Gallay Method, which was a great way to approach it.

As it was a 1 ½ hour session she covered a lot of ground and also performed several things. In particular I enjoyed hearing her play the first of the Gallay Op. 57 low horn etudes in a really spirited performance. You don’t get that spirit without a lot of hard work on the natural horn. I have been learning these particular etudes this past year mainly on single B-flat as part of my “improve the B-flat horn fingerings” project but also worked out that same etude on natural horn as well. My own teachers did not use this book with me–great etudes if you are looking for something a little different.

Back to the session and workshop, this was the 9:00 AM “service” on Sunday. I am not certain if I have ever met Dr. Thelander in person, who is currently director of the School of Music at the University of Iowa, but I was glad to be able to see this session now, and it has inspired me to get out the natural horn again and work on more of those Op. 57 etudes. Maybe even get back to work on that book project.

Tomorrow I will wrap up this series on the 1989 SWRHW with William Lane.