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This post is a prologue to an upcoming series on the Mozart Horn Concertos, starting in earnest next Tuesday Monday. Topics will include: some simple basics, resources and tips, interpretive suggestions and a few ideas on cadenzas.
The Horn concertos of W.A. Mozart are among some of the most treasured of the horn repertoire. We are most fortunate to have such great music in our performance catalog.
An accidental remix
A colleague long ago told a story to me about a rehearsal where she was working on a Mozart Rondo with her piano accompanist. Things were going fairly well for a while when suddenly the two parts did not seem to match at all.
It took a few minutes of head scratching until they figured what had happened.
It turned out that while the soloist was playing the Rondo in E-flat from the 4th concerto, her pianist was reading the music to the Rondo from the 2nd concerto. In spite of this, the mixed combination actually worked for a while before falling apart.
They had a good laugh upon discovering this.
Stacking rondos
That story has inspired a bit of digital mischief done with audio software. These are posted here just for fun and amusement.
First, stacking the 2nd and 4th right on top of each other:
[dewplayer:/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/mashup12.mp3]
The vertical alignment goes askew every now and then between the two tracks due to some tempo fluctuations, but the similarities between the melodic and harmonic profiles for the first minute or so are very close.
Mashups
From the three E-flat concertos, the opening themes are mixed into mini-mashups.
Variation 1:
[dewplayer:/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/mashupB1.mp3]
Variation 2:
[dewplayer:/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/mashupB12b.mp3]
Variation 3:
[dewplayer:/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/mashupB123bcd.mp3]
