BBC Philharmonic, Gruber, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Stravinsky's opera Oedipus Rex bracketed by Macmillan's Mabinogion and Britten's Serenade
What Manchester has today, Vienna will have tomorrow. The BBC Phil’s composer/conductor HK “Nali” Gruber is taking his musicians and singers back home to the Wiener Konzerthaus to reprise this concert next week. You can’t fault it for variety – Stravinsky, Britten and MacMillan, Gruber’s predecessor as composer/conductor here. But the main thrust is celebrating Stravinsky. It is the centenary of The Rite of Spring. In the BBC Phil’s series of celebratory concerts, we here came to his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, also premiered in Paris, in 1927.
Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Dvořák, Gallay
Solo works for cello and horn alongside two delectable symphonies
Bach: The Six Cello Suites Peter Wispelwey (Evil Penguin Records)
Montgomery, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Queen Elizabeth Hall
Mozart the entertainer serenades with music written on the run
It’s a sadness to all lovers of the French horn that Mozart’s four horn concertos, the product of his longest friendship, make their appearance all too rarely in the concert hall. Though the building blocks of the repertoire, perhaps their apparent frivolity counts against them. But last night the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its principal horn Roger Montgomery brought out of mothballs the best-known concerto, K495, and planted it in the middle of a programme celebrating Mozart the entertainer.
Classical CDs Weekly: Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Berlin Philharmonic Horn Quartet
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Mozart: Piano Concertos no 6, 8 and 9 Angela Hewitt (piano), Orchestra da Camera di Mantova (Hyperion)
How many French horns can play Wagner at one time?
The Royal Opera House and the British Horn Society are teaming up to attempt a very euphonious record
The business of setting musical records does not normally have much to do with actual music. The longest an oboeist can play with circular breathing, the fastest piccolo player, the highest note sung by a human etc – these are not about music-making. A record of a rather more impressive order is due to be attempted at the Royal Opera House on Sunday, 23 October. The largest number of French horns ever gathered in one place will attempt to make music together.
ELF. Eales, Lee, Findon. Piano, Horn and... Flute?
An unusual trio of musical veterans play Phantom, jazz and Nyman
Some things just don’t seem to belong in a pairing. The flute and the French horn both have their distinct sonic personality. It wouldn’t be going out on a limb to suggest that the average listener tends to lean towards one or the other. Even Mozart wrote for the horn out of love but trotted out his flute compositions for money. But opposites can and do attract and so it once more proves in a new recording featuring the horn and the flute and, discreetly chaperoning the pair of them, the piano.
Sarah Willis, First Lady of the French Horn
The Berlin Phil's only woman on brass goes solo
No woman has ever achieved a higher profile on the French horn than Sarah Willis. Why? It's not as if she is a renowned soloist. But she is the first and only woman to join the brass section of the world's most celebrated and widely followed orchestra. It will be no surprise if this Saturday the BBC cameras as usual pick her out from row upon row of Teutonic males in the second of the Berlin Philharmonic’s two Prom 2010 appearances. But in addition to her Berliner duties, this year Willis has stepped out from under the orchestra’s giant shadow for the first time.
I Found My Horn special: The Art of Dennis Brain
The greatest horn player in history? The author of a book in praise of the instrument assesses his legacy
I Found My Horn is both an autobiography of sorts and a biography of sorts. It tells the story of those phases of my life, as a schoolboy and then again aged 40, when I happened to have a French horn in my hands. But it is also an account of the instrument's long and extremely colourful history. In the 20th century that history is inextricably connected to the name of Dennis Brain, probably the greatest soloist the instrument has ever known.