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This originally was posted as part of a review of Day two of the 2012 International Horn Symposium in Denton, TX. This concert was extremely notable, and gave a great insight into why people like Telemann suddenly started writing for the horn; the sheer spectacle of horns with orchestra. It was a crowd pleaser at the time to be sure.
The evening concert featured something I have never heard at a workshop, an evening of Baroque Horn Concerti! Natural horn soloist Andrew Clark was joined by Steven Denroche, Paul Hopkins, and Bruce Atwell on works by Telemann, Handel, and Heinichen. It has been a while since I have seen natural horn featured in such a big way and this concert with baroque orchestra was stunning.
My personal favorites performed were the concluding works on each half of the concert. The first half closed with the Telemann Concerto for Violin and Three Horns in D Major. The first movement has long been a favorite of mine in particular and it did not disappoint! The second half closed with a Concerto for Two Choirs by Handel, the “choirs” in this case being two groups of instrumental soloists. For our performance the solo groups were reduced to just horns and the effect and frankly spectacle of the two solo groups of Baroque natural horns (one on each side of the stage) was again just stunning.
The instruments were of period dimensions (small bells/bore) but the performers made use of vent holes to correct intonation. All in all, this concert was a treat and is of a type that is very unlikely to be seen again at a horn workshop, at least not for many years. Which made the fact that it looked like a good percentage of participants chose not to attend this program at all a bit disappointing to this writer. Bravo to host William Scharnberg for putting this program together, it was a highlight of the week for me.
