photo by Katrina Russell 1999

 

 

This is Engelbert Schmid's model of a mid-nineteenth century original by J. Lorenz, Linz, Austria . It arrived a few weeks before the recording sessions for my recording of the Brahms Horn Trio, when I wanted to make a darker sound than the earlier Jungwirth Lausmann model would allow. The cylindrical tubing on this horn is actually the same bore as that of the Lausmann model, but the expansion on the bell and the branch leading into it is much more generously proportioned, and it does have a bigger tone. Despite the bore sizes of these two instruments being the same, the crooks were not particularly interchangeable, their lengths being different .

 

When we recorded the Brahms Trio (composed in 1865) the piano was tuned at a sharper pitch than when we had rehearsed , so in the cold church where we recorded it was difficult to keep the horn up to pitch. Even when the tuning slide was pushed all the way in, the horn was still a bit flat on some notes, so I had to keep blowing warm air into the horn to try to make it sharper. The problem with this is that the more warm moist air goes into cold metal tubing, the more condensation collects inside. After we had recorded the first movement I remembered that I had another mouthpiece in my bag which would help me to play sharper, because although it was identical on the inside, it had been shaved down on the outside so that it would fit into narrower crooks. When I put this into my Eb crook, it made the total length about 3 mm less, and the job of playing in tune was made somewhat easier.

One of the nice qualities about this horn is that the shape of the inside of the bell allows several of the mid-register hand stopped notes to "speak" more clearly than they do on some other hand horns . During the 19th century, composers made increasing use of these notes which bridge the gap between the natural harmonics, so it comes as no surprise that the later the instrument, the better these notes became. In particular, two other projects made this a useful horn to play: recording the Horn Concerto in F by Bernhard Crusell , and the works for natural horn and fortepiano by Carl Czerny . The Crusell Concerto was recently rediscovered in Sweden in the form of a first movement "Allegro" arranged in 1840 for solo horn and a brass accompaniment of 2 keyed bugles, 2 natural trumpets, 3 natural horns, 2 trombones and 2 ophicleides by Frans Preumayr . This was the way we recorded it in 1999 with the London Gabrieli Brass Ensemble - 8½ minutes of the most technically challenging music I've ever played on a hand horn. The Czerny works: the Three Brilliant Fantasies and the Andante e Polacca are the subject of an essay in the 2001 Historic Brass Society Journal , but suffice it to say that recording these a few weeks after the Crusell made my practice worthwhile.
Recording details:
Brahms Horn Trio with Catherine Martin, violin, and Geoffrey Govier, piano
on EMI Classics CDZ 5 72822 2
Crusell Horn Concerto with the London Gabrieli Brass Ensemble on Hyperion CDA67119
Czerny: Complete music for horn and pianoforte with Geoffrey Govier, fortepiano
on Hyperion CDH55074