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Last weekend I shared a recital with Dr. Deanna Swoboda, our tuba/Euphonium professor at ASU. Besides two trios (with piano) we both played two solos. She featured works by Hispanic composers, and for my pair I also wanted to do something different, and found two works I would like to highlight to Horn Matters readers.
Aliyah Danielle: Autumn
The newest work was Autumn for horn and pre-recorded track by Aliyah Danielle. Aliyah had been my student at ASU, and I knew she was working on a variety of projects during her recent MM study at Berklee Spain. The title of the work fit great as our recital was just a few days into Autumn. This work for me as a performer was way out of the box, I had never performed a solo work in this style and had never performed with a track. The performance went well, and I think this work will appeal to a many players looking for short recital works. Give it a listen below:
Reynaldo Hahn: Souvenir de Constantinople
The oldest work on the recital dates to 1908, a work by Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947). I think we can fairly call him an underrepresented composer, but also he is an example of it is not so simple to say that, as every individual has their story. He was born in Venezuela and his mother was Venezuelan, but his father was a German Jew, and he lived most of his life in Paris. His Wikipedia page is quite long, there is it seems a lot of interest in Hahn, especially his song output. This work, Souvenir de Constantinople, was written as part of a large commissioning project led by A. L. Hettich, dedicated to the composition of Vocaleses in a modern style.
The horn version was edited by Ed. Vuillermoz – full publication title is Édouard Vuillermoz, Dix pièces mélodiques a changements de tons : [pour] cor a pistons [et piano], Paris, A. Leduc, 1927. What he did was take a group of the Hettich commissions and set them for horn as studies in transposition. It is a challenge to work through all the transpositions, but it is also a lovely little work, which may be heard below.
There are a lot of options out there for interesting works! Take the time to explore a bit and find works like these.
What horn am I playing??
For this recital there is a longer story, but in short I felt the most comfortable on some of the runs such as those later in the Hahn and in the trios with tuba on my big Paxman 25AND. I played it also on my two solo CDs, it was a fun change of pace and I think worked very well sonically with tuba.
