IHS Brisbane 2010, Part VI: Friday Morning

The event ended on Friday. I started my day with a quick warm-up and some practice for the afternoon concert, so I had to miss the group warm-up which was with Nicole Cash which I heard was a good one. I also made a quick run to the vendors when they opened to check on a couple last things, and then it was on to four concerts.

Before and after Morning Tea were recitals featuring Sarah Barrett, Robert Johnson, Andrew Bain, and J.D. Shaw. Effectively however instead of being two recitals they were one very long recital that ran from 9:30 AM to 1:30 PM with a half hour break. As such those performances will be the focus of this post, with the activities of the remainder of Friday to be discussed tomorrow. The image at right is the cover of the program book for the event.

One general topic I have not hit yet is one that the host and the artists have to sort out before the event, that of what to put on concerts. Some artists opt for the big splash with new works and playing things that mere mortals really should not be able to play on a horn. Others opt for works that I am sure some audience members in fairness really want to hear, works that one might think of as jury pieces or senior recital solos. An event honestly needs both, there has to be a balance, and over the course of these four hours we heard examples of all of the above from the featured artists.

One other general thing since I have been mentioning the hall, the two artists on the first program chose to play with no additional panels and the piano short stick and the final two artists chose to play either with no piano at all or with the lid full up.

First up was Sarah Barrett who is Principal Horn of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. She opened with a tight performance of the Hindemith Alto Horn Sonata. The pianist was her husband Andrew Barrett who hit the difficult piano part well. Barrett has a great sound, she is one of a number of players at this event that had such an effortless quality to what they do, it just sounds so easy for them. She also produced plenty of volume on the big spots. For me the most interesting work from her program was the Ballade and Waltz composed by Andrew Barrett. It had a bit of a popular feel and especially so the waltz which was a jazz waltz.

The other hornist on this half of the program was Robert Johnson who is Principal Horn of the Sydney Symphony. He presented a program with several works that were either new or new to pretty much everyone there. One that caught my attention was a work that was composed by an Australian composer back in the 1950s, the Three Pieces for Horn and Piano by Alfred Hill. What was nice about this work was that it is not only not well known but also it was aimed compositionally toward younger students, I can imagine these as good study works that should be better known, and they were of course well played by Johnson. He also had a world premier of a solo horn work, Concorno by Alan Holly (great title) and his last work also was quite an attention grabber, Bakery Hill Rising for solo horn and eight pre-recorded horns by Vincent Plush, with lighting effects and some staging.

I should mention that the above artists alternated who was playing pretty much piece by piece, as did the artists on the next concert. With that we went to break.

On return we were back and first heard Andrew Bain who is Principal Horn of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He opened with the Mozart Quintet K 407, very nicely played, elegant with great balance. In the last movement he played a little cadenza that sounded like the one in the Mason Jones book but it could have been a coincidence.

After that work we had a surprise! On Monday there was a contributing artist recital that was supposed to feature Darren Robins (of www.hornexcerpts.org fame) playing the Gillingham Divertimento for horn, tuba and piano. However, the tubist had a schedule conflict come up (Steve Rosse of the Sydney Symphony) so they were able to slip the work into this program. It was a good surprise as it was very well played and I really like the combination of horn, tuba, and piano.

Then things shifted gears yet again, with the remainder of the program being either solo horn works performed by Andrew Bain or an impressive variety of works performed by J. D. Shaw. Without taking anything away from Bain, his other two works were announced from the stage and I am honestly not sure I have accurate titles or composers in my notes. They were however very nicely played and were new or at least newer works for solo horn; I hope the details make it into some official report of the event in The Horn Call.

J. D. Shaw is currently the horn professor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, but that does not really tell you where he is coming from as he formerly toured for years with the Boston Brass and is very well known in the drum corps world as well. He knows something about showmanship and put it out there as he took on the end of the concert.

First up was a world premiere of a work he had commissioned for horn, didgeridoo, percussion, and piano. The work Catalpa is by William Pitts and in it the horn doubles on didgeridoo, which is very likely a first at a horn workshop and very appropriate in Australia. His next work was by the composer of the film score of The Godfather, Nina Rota. Castel del Monte is for horn and piano and hearing it I wonder why it is not performed more often, it is an attractive work that Shaw laid down well. Next up were arrangements of works by Astor Piazzolla, three tangos. Again, these had a lot of wow factor, they were really hard arrangements played really well of very interesting music. Along the way though by now people were drifting out, perhaps because of the concert running long by a half hour over the printed program time, so maybe 2/3 of the original audience heard his final work, an arrangement of Glitter and Be Gay by Bernstein, the soprano aria. Again, wow, Shaw has high chops like are hard to even imagine having and he impressively closed out an impressive performance.

The one final aside for this concert would be that Shaw noted from the stage that as a child growing up he had always dreamed of being a featured artist at an International Horn Symposium before he turned forty years old, and he made it by one day! Happy birthday J. D., and “lordy, lordy, look who’s forty.”

With that I was off, late, to the banquet but got there in time for food! Look for a final post on the last two concerts of the event tomorrow.