IHS Brisbane 2010, Part II: Monday

The first full day of the event was Monday. Of all the days on the schedule this is perhaps the busiest on paper and in reality. For sure it would be impossible to be at everything as there were as many as four things happening at the same time. So choices had to be made, and one overall goal for the week is to go to as much as I can to things by presenters I have never heard before to keep things fresh.

Good Morning Brisbane

As I knew that I would have to miss the master class in the afternoon by Hector McDonald, which is one I really would have liked to have heard, I hit the trail early and went to his warm-up session at 8AM. MacDonald is a player that I was unfamiliar with but his bio describes him as an Australian horn soloist who is “presently Professor for Horn at the University for Music and the Performing Arts in Graz, Austria.” We will hear him more this week. I like warm-up sessions in general and will hit several during the week. My observation is they can be run one of two ways. One way is to set it up like the warm-up they would use and to run it through with the group of people present. The other way is to more or less talk about warming up without really playing much. Either way can be an interesting view into the pedagogy of the leader of the session. In this case McDonald hit pretty much a middle ground. In initial comments he emphasized how the warm-up will be different for everyone. His version started with stretching, some free and mouthpiece buzzing, and warming up on the F side. His warm-up session was led with him on Vienna horn which for me was a first at a workshop. The playing was a mixture of low flexibilities, scales, and long tones, all in the mid and low range. We never played above the staff in the hour, probably due to the constraints of time.

At 9:00 I had a rehearsal for the Advisory Council horn ensemble (more on this another day, with the notes for now being the surprise guest conductor was great and I don’t often need to double tongue down around low C!) and after that planned to go to the session by Oregon Symphony Principal Horn John Cox on the playing the long line. However, there was a room change and his room was quite full by the time my end of the line got to the door so I chose to rest a bit before the 11:30 recital.

The recital was by David Evans and Ben Jacks. Neither player is one that was familiar to me (both are principal horn players of orchestras in Australia) and this was a great first recital to hear. Evans played the Hindemith horn sonata with a beautiful sound and elegant slurs. Jacks played a new work by Philip Hall for horn and piano Alexander Pearce very handsomely but I must say the program behind the work was a bit depressing as it involved a tale of cannibalism.

A Good Afternoon

In any event, I had to duck out after that to get lunch and get ready for my Beyond Farkas presentation. This photo is of the electronic sign next to my door. The session went well and was attended by 40 or so hornists; I especially appreciated the great comments from the audience. This was the busiest hour scheduled for the whole week as there were actually four different things going on.

After a brief visit to exhibits (more on those another day) I had another Advisory Council meeting and a rehearsal and dinner. Whew!

Blasts from the Past

There is a balance any workshop host has to find, as people want to hear well-known individuals and groups but also want to hear the new talents of the horn world. Our host hit that balance with an Australian flavor over the course of the workshop.

Monday ended featuring Frank Lloyd and the American Horn Quartet. Mr. Lloyd and the AHQ are not exactly old timers of course but I a fairly sure this is the fourth workshop I have heard Lloyd and the AHQ play at over the years so for me they are old friends so to speak. Fortunately they both had some new things to hear.

As to Frank Lloyd, he just sounds so effortless when he plays. Wonderful playing although it curiously did not seem to wow the audience as much as I would have thought it should. It may have been the rep which was not well known. I was especially interested in his first work, the Quantz Concerto. I have never heard anyone play this live (Tuckwell recorded it years ago) and it was so refreshing to hear at a workshop. As I tell people often, on horn we have a group of Baroque concertos we could play that are better than music trumpet players play all the time. Also I should note that if there were an award for the most high C’s played in a concert at the event Lloyd certainly set the bar really high tonight.

As to the AHQ, they got the strongest audience reaction to their closer Casbah of Tetouan, the great work for five horns by Kerry Turner. I knew there was a brass quintet version of this work but I did not know until Turner gave the intro that actually that was the original version, composed way back in 1983, and it was re-written for five horns. Frank Lloyd was the guest hornist to fill out the group. I don’t know if it was the wood panels directly behind the group or some other quirk of my seating and the acoustic but the AHQ for me came across as playing in a more angular, aggressive style than I recall from them in the past. In any event it was a crowd pleasing show and a great end to the first full day.

Tuesday I have my solo performance and there is a lot more on the schedule. I will have more from the event tomorrow.

Continue to Part III