If You Love Horns
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
If you love horns, you’ll adore Robert Schumann’s Concertpiece in F, for four horns and orchestra. Schumann wrote of it: “It seems to be one of my best pieces.” Agreed.
The four horn players in the Schumann Concertpiece are Dale Clevenger, Richard Oldberg, Thomas Howell, and Norman Schweikert, all incredible virtuosi in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which is here conducted by Daniel Barenboim. What a blast!
Irwin Schulhoff, born 101 years ago today, died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942. George Alexander Albrecht and the Philharmonia Hungarica bring us his Symphony No. 2, a work that premiered in Prague in 1935; it is neo-Classical in nature, but jazz elements creep into the finale to surprise and delight us.
Austrian composer Wenzel Matiegka was a contemporary of Franz Schubert, and it is likely that they were well acquainted. When Schubert discovered Matiegka’s Notturno for guitar, flute, and clarinet or viola, he proposed turning it into a quartet (adding a cello), but never finished the adaptation. The piece as originally conceived needed no tampering, well intentioned or otherwise, as you will hear in the elegant rendition by guitarist JoAnn Faletta, flutist Debra Wedells-Cross, and clarinetist Robert Alemany.
The four horn players in the Schumann Concertpiece are Dale Clevenger, Richard Oldberg, Thomas Howell, and Norman Schweikert, all incredible virtuosi in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which is here conducted by Daniel Barenboim. What a blast!
Irwin Schulhoff, born 101 years ago today, died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942. George Alexander Albrecht and the Philharmonia Hungarica bring us his Symphony No. 2, a work that premiered in Prague in 1935; it is neo-Classical in nature, but jazz elements creep into the finale to surprise and delight us.
Austrian composer Wenzel Matiegka was a contemporary of Franz Schubert, and it is likely that they were well acquainted. When Schubert discovered Matiegka’s Notturno for guitar, flute, and clarinet or viola, he proposed turning it into a quartet (adding a cello), but never finished the adaptation. The piece as originally conceived needed no tampering, well intentioned or otherwise, as you will hear in the elegant rendition by guitarist JoAnn Faletta, flutist Debra Wedells-Cross, and clarinetist Robert Alemany.
