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One of our most loved works for horn is the Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra by Robert Schumann. A staple of recent horn events and especially challenging for the first horn (with numerous excursions above high C), I am honored to be performing this pioneering work for valved horn again for the second time this year at IHS Texas.
It is a work that has long interested me; I featured it in my dissertation and also in a later article, “Crooks and the 19th-Century Horn,” The Horn Call 30, no. 1 (November, 1999), this article also being winner of the 2000 Harold Meek Memorial Award of the International Horn Society. (That article content is not easily accessed online at this time and I should go back and convert some of that text into new articles for Horn Matters).
Part of my preparation for the performance earlier this year was to play the piece a number of times with recordings (see this article for a bit more), mostly with the American Horn Quartet version. At that time the performance was from the AHQ revised parts, which spread the first horn load around between the first three horns. However, at IHS Texas we will be playing the standard version, so even while I am still playing third I have some things to work out anew.
Yesterday I got back to the preparation phase of playing with recordings and could not find the AHQ recording. So I went back and pulled the version recorded in 1997 by John Elliott Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique on period instruments to play along with. I had been reminded of it earlier in the week reading an article in the newly arrived 2011 issue of the Historic Brass Society Journal as well, for in the introductory paragraphs of an article on Brahms and the orchestral horn author Anneke Scott wrote of this recording of the Schumann Konzertstück that
To many period horn players, this performance and the subsequent release of a recording were comparable to the breaking of the four-minute mile.
…to hear it played on single F rotary horns, instruments often deemed more primitive and more risky than the modern horn, was awe-inspiring.
Yes fans of the horn, this recording is on single F horns! Having a reproduction period instrument of that same general type as they used (more here – made for me by Richard Seraphinoff) I was again as awestruck as I was when I first purchased this recording, part of the set of complete Schumann symphonies. It really is a very exciting performance with a lot of “edge” and energy. BRAVO to hornists Roger Montgomery, Gavin Edwards, Susan Dent, and Robert Maskell, this is one that really must be heard. No descant or triple horns! Amazon has it here.
In honor of this recording, at the end of my practice session yesterday I got out my single F. With a very small mouthpiece (smaller than I would normally think of using on a natural horn or early valved horn) I can get a lot of the sound of the lead players in the section on the recording and reach the high notes. So while I have now performed the AHQ version (video here) and next week will play the original version of the Konzertstück on modern instruments with a great section, now I have a new item for my bucket list — to play this work in a great section on single F horns! It would be awe-inspiring if done well, but alas this may never be attempted at a workshop on this side of the pond. Any takers?
To close, the new HBSJ article already mentioned by Anneke Scott is very worth reading, hitting on many of the same sources and topics as my own more concise article on Brahms and the orchestral horn in Horn Articles Online. More on the Historic Brass Society may be found here. And while you are surfing also check out the website of Anneke Scott, I am a fan of period horns and she is a player I hope to hear more from.
