Music which inspired one to start playing the horn

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Music which inspired one to start playing the horn

I was thinking the other day about how I came to start playing horn (about 30 years ago). I started at age 8 playing cornet in the grade school band, which I thought was pretty cool at the time. I can still remember the evening my older brother brought home a recording of the Shostakovich 10th Symphony - we already had the Shostakovich 5th, and I really liked it. When the record got to the big horn call in the third movement, it hit me like a ton of bricks! I didn't know WHAT instrument that was, but it knew it was way cooler than the cornet and I WANTED TO PLAY IT! Just ten notes, 30 years ago, but I am still playing at :-) the horn.

I am curious: did anyone else on the list have a similar experience with a "pivotal" piece of music which inspired them to take up the horn?

I hate to admit this, but I fell in love with the horn after hearing the theme music from an old balck & white TV show named "Checkmate". I asked my father what instrument that was and switched from trumpet the next day.

For me a turning point was hearing a recording of Shostakovich Cello concerto. Rostropovich -- Ormandy -- Mason Jones. Very impressive to a kid... and I'm still impressed!

Szell, Cleveland, Beethoven's seventh... yes, still.

It was the Rhine Journey, an old Philly recording w/Stokowski....

Been cursed eversince.

An old recording with a strange pairing: Eugene Ormandy conducting the London Symphony in Dvorak New World Symphony. Many years later I listened to it again and I am now convinced that the first horn was Barry Tuckwell.

I recall listening to the RCA release of Van Cliburn performing Tchaikovky's Piano Concerto #1 and the horns blew me away during the opening bars. I was a fledgling trumpet student at the time and when I heard this recording I thought it was the most animalistic brass playing I had ever heard. I didn't make the transition to the horn for another 9 years as I continued on the trumpet for the next few years. I soon had to wear braces on my teeth it wasn't the most comfortable experience so during the interim I played percussion until my orthodontic obligations were finished.

A member of the high school band was a virtuoso on the horn at age 14 and I was inspired to play the horn just by listening to him. He later became my first teacher and he turned me on to Mahler and R. Strauss.

funny, but my "pivotal piece" was a shostakovich too - "festive overture". had to sightread it for an audition after junior college and altho it didnt get me started on horn, it sure made certain that i never give it up!

still in luv with it

I am interested in this because of something that happened several weeks ago at the library where I work. A girl of about 10 asked me if I could recommend some music that would show her what the horn sounded like, and more importantly, she wanted orchestral music that would demonstrate how the horn was used. A very insightful question for a 10 year old! She wanted to join the band in the fall and wasn't really sure which instrument she wanted to play. She said that nobody in her family knows anything about classical music so they couldn't help her decide. I gave her the Mozart concertos and Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony. I also gave her a CD with Peter and the Wolf and Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra so she could hear all of the different instruments to make her decision.

My question is similar to Jeffery's. What would y'all have given her if you had an unlimited collection to choose from (which my small public library definitely is NOT)?

Tchaikovsky 4th, Philadelphio Orchestra concert in the Academy of Music, circa 1947, with Jones, Fearn, Mayer, Pierson, Tomei, Lannutti. I sat in the orchestra seats, so could see only Ormandy and the strings, but the horn section sound was so powerful I felt I could almost see it going out over my head. I had already started the horn, but had never realized it could sound like that!!

Surely I'm not the only one inspired by Dennis Brain? I spent my youngest years listening to an old Angel LP of Dennis playing the Mozart concerti....Seems kind of bland compared to the Shotokovich and Beethoven y'all have mentioned, but how could I listen to that recording and *not* fall in love with the horn?

I would have loaded her down with Hermann Baumann recordings followed by the entire Mahler cycle and Strauss Tone Poems. That would give her the extremes of the horn used in a variety of venues or scare the daylights out of her.

I, too, was impressed by Dennis during my early years on the horn, but please, don't call me Shirley.

For me, the first piece I studied was Beethoven's 3rd, "Eroica", (I was 8 years old, had been playing for a year), then The Firebird, which I studied for years (my father had all these scores and recordings). He used to listen to Die Gotterdammerung and my sisters and I would act it out, but I never thought of that as music that you could play. I thought it was the music you hear when you die.

Hey Jim... Don't look now but they're trashing 8-D's on another thread near here. Better hit the trenches and man the cannon. (Oops, another 8-D joke slips by)

While a horn major at SF State, I routinely went to the SF Symphony each Thursday night (student night).

There was one week when they listed the first symphony of some guy I had never heard of - someone named Gustav Mahler. I went to the concert simply because I always went.

The guest conductor was Dimitri Mitropolous (sp?). I was standing up in the dress circle where I could see and hear everything. This may have been one of the first Mahler performances in the bay area. It was a revelation to many of us.

At any rate, by the time the first movement was over I was hooked good. The array of horns actually did the Aufstehen business in the finale - what it may have lacked in tonal grandeur it made up for with visual impact.

I walked out of the opera house not quite the same person as when I entered. Next day I bought the only existing recording at that time (about 1950).

My Dad had an old scratchy recording of Mitropolous with the Minneapolis SO doing Mahler #1 (late 40's/early 50's?) that I FELL IN LOVE WITH as a 15 year old. 35 years ago. I have since listened to it again, with (I hope) better ears. Although the performance is fairly technically weak, the excitement is still there and I know why as a kid I fell for it. On the positive side, I still appreciate Mitropolous' pacing and architecture.

My first experience was, as a grade-schooler, finding that the Portland public library had a small collection of sheet music, and in it was Haydn's first horn concerto. That was when I discovered that people actually wrote music featuring the horn. I copied it into F (not knowing that one could transpose "on the fly", and tried to play that long enough to become a small nuisance to my folks. Then they bought me a copy of Alan Civil's recording of Mozart's 4. That really hooked me. I still have the disk, rather worn now. Civil's tone remains my ideal.

For me I guess the pivotal music that got me playing the horn was the Mozart and Strauss recordings with Dennis Brain that my folks gave me along with my first horn, a Rampone and Cazzani single F, that memorable Christmas day though it may have been hearing Mason Jones play at a Philly Orchestra Kiddie concert a few months before when I first expressed interest to them in playing. I don't remember what he did, but I think it might have been the Chabrier Largetto.

As for pivotal music that made me want to trash the horn, the list is way too long to put in here and anyway I have to go to the country club for my therapy session.

I only wish I had a glorious story to tell. Unfortunately mine is a public school story so it doesn't have anything to do with professional players or even particularly good music. I saw our local Chicago Public high school band in concert when I was in 4th grade and thought those curly-wurly shiny things were really cool looking and sounded special so the next year, when beginning band started, guess what I played?

Right!

Flute!

It took me 20 years to get the opportunity to play horn. In another 20 I might actually figure out how to get it to sound like a horn. Or maybe a french horn.

For me, it wasn't a particular piece; it was four of the worst junior high horn players in history.

In eighth grade, I was one of WAAAAAAY too many trumpet players kicking, scratching, clawing, etc. for the top chair. My "lover-not-fighter" nature caused me to look for an "easier" alternative to success.

One look at those horn hacks (Sorry Steve!) and my plans were complete. "How hard can it possibly be?" (I never said I was particularly bright).

As it turned out, the very first piece I played on horn in my very first summer band rehearsal before freshman year was Lohengrin ... ya think that had anything to do with it?

Mahler 1, Israel Philharmonic recording, made in the 80's or early 90's I believe. Great horn playing, and entire orchestra playing for that matter. They also made a great recording of Mahler Symph. #2 live at the Masada in Israel, do check it out!

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