Regular readers of these posts (I think there are a few!! 😃) may remember a tale I told about a difficulty that myself and the principal horn had with the opening of Beethoven’s 4th Symphony that reduced us to tears of laughter!!
The next concert I played in after that included the music that I am sharing today. We both had been co-opted by the Unitarian Orchestra as “extra” horns as they were playing Mahler’s 1st Symphony which requires more than usual – neither of us were regular members of the orchestra. So that we wouldn’t feel too left out of it and could participate in the first half of the concert we shared the 1st horn part in this piece – it also gave the orchestra’s principal a chance to rest before the Mahler.
Usually with two players playing 1st Horn there is a main player and a “bumper” – it could be said that his job is to do all the hard work while the main player gets the glory!!😂 Anyway, in this case we didn’t work it like that, but instead shared the part – much of which actually benefits from having two players on the part anyway. The solos we took turns.
However, we didn’t have much time to rehearse and, I don’t think we played the entire piece together – so we were working it out as we went along. There is a short – but important – horn solo in the slow movement that we very nearly left to each other!! That would have been embarrassing 😱- fortunately at the last second I realised that my mate was in no way going to play it and just managed to get my horn to my lips in time!!
With Holst – the first piece most people think of is The Planets Suite – this is also an excellent and fun piece to play and to listen to and lots of the orchestra get prominence – including the Double Basses – which pleased my old friend Gordon Bruce.