An Italian Overture today – this one has a story attached.
One afternoon (many years ago) I got a phone call – there was a concert that evening and they were short of a horn player – could I possibly come along to the rehearsal that afternoon and play in the concert.
I got there as quickly as I could – they were rehearsing Pictures at an Exhibition – I was playing 4th Horn and spent the first hour or so with nothing to play (good practice for some band rehearsals in the percussion section as it turned out!!) and then got a bit of a blow at the end – everything else had already been rehearsed so it was sight reading time for me.
One of the blessings (or curses) of playing French Horn is that you get to do a lot of transposition – this particular overture (which opened that concert) has two horns in E and two horns in G – so everyone gets to do a bit of transposition. As usual – sight reading combined with transposition adds an extra layer of “fun”.
What I missed was that part way through it becomes all horns in E – so the next note I played rather incorrectly 😃 my partner coincidentally split the note he was playing – so I didn’t figure that I had played the wrong note until the next entry – oops😂
Transposing is a skill that has less use as a percussionist – although I do recall a couple of parts that were seemingly for Glockenspiel in B flat😂 and there are no tymp parts for the hymn tunes so reading off the E flat bass part gives a good clue to what is needed.
This version of The Thieving Magpie overture was recorded in the magnificent Goldenen Saal of the Musikverein that I was privileged to go to many times during my time in Wien.