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MOZART 14 . 2 • Pip Eastop (hn); 1Anthony Halstead, cond; 1The Hanover Band; 2Eroica Qrt • HYPERION 68097 (72:48)

Does anyone know why British horn players have cornered the market in recordings of the Mozart concertos? I know of seven who have recorded the four concertos—Dennis Brain, Timothy Brown, Jeffrey Bryant, Alan Civil, Frank Lloyd, David Pyatt, and Barry Tuckwell, and that’s not counting those who have done the same using the so-called “natural” (valveless) horn—Anthony Halstead (twice), Roger Montgomery, and now Pip Eastop. There may well be a few more I have overlooked.

The natural horn was a unique creature. Its pure, open tones were limited to those of the overtone series of the key in which it was pitched by the use of crooks (additional lengths of tubing), but unlike the (also valveless until the mid-19th century), the player could “stop” the open notes by partially or completely choking the air stream with his right hand, which rested in the bell of the instrument, thus making available a much greater number of notes. The price paid for this manipulation was a highly uneven tone quality, ranging from pure, beautiful open tones to buzzy, almost unmusical sounds, and a gray area in between. In the context of the time, one gasps in astonishment at the agility of the virtuoso for whom Mozart wrote these concertos (), but to modern ears, the effect is something of a freak show. The invention of valves in the early 19th century effectively ended the need to “stop” notes. century effectively ended the need to “stop” notes.

That said, Pip Eastop’s performances are probably the best to date played on the natural horn. Anthony Halstead’s two accounts are the runners up. Here Halstead takes up the baton to lead his colleague in these performances. Eastop knocks off the concertos with all the flair, self-confidence, and sensitivity one expects from a soloist. But what sets Eastop in a class by himself is the sheer musicality of his playing. In this he surpasses most of the competition on the valve horn as well. There are moments of rhythmic insecurity, and there is no denying that some passages sound labored, but that is the nature of the natural horn, no matter how accomplished the player. Eastop is certain to seduce the listener with his gorgeous tone (at least on the open notes), and some of those cadenzas he dreamed up will knock your socks off. (One covers an amazing four octaves plus!)

Eastop’s vivid playing is complemented by the tasteful, stylish contribution from The Hanover Band and from the Eroica Quartet, which joins Eastop for Mozart’s Horn Quintet. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only CD to include this essential work of the horn repertory with the four concertos. Robert Markow

This article originally appeared in Issue 38:6 (July/Aug 2015) of Fanfare Magazine.

FESCA Piano Trios: No. 2 in e, op. 12; No. 5 in b, op. 46 • Tr Paian • CPO 777 862-2 (65:54) It is tempting to peg short-lived Alexander Ernst Fesca (1820–1849) as yet another victim in the not insignificant number of early 19th-century composers who had the misfortune to live in the long shadow cast by Beethoven. But considering that Fesca’s life chronologically intersected the lives of Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Schumann, all three of whom managed to emerge from Beethoven’s shadow to chart their own independent destinies, the Beethoven defense doesn’t really explain Fesca’s consignment to virtual anonymity following his death from tuberculosis just shy of his 29th birthday.

I would propose an alternate theory, one which is not often accorded much consideration, and that is the accident of geography. Fesca was born in Karlsruhe, graduated from Berlin’s Royal Academy of the Arts at the age of 14, and then returned home to Karlsruhe, hundreds of miles from Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig, Paris, and London. In other words, by dint of choice or necessity (who knows which?), Fesca settled in what was then a relatively small provincial German town that was hardly a hotbed of musical innovation, far from the major European capitals of music in the early decades of the 19th century. (He died, by the way, in Braunschweig, a town midway between Manheim and Stuttgart.)

It’s hard to know how much of the new Romantic music Fesca was exposed to while studying, still a child, at the Academy in Berlin, or what opportunities he had to hear new works and rub elbows with the trend-setters of the day once he was back in Karlsruhe. But most major composers gravitated to the centers of musical commerce where they had those opportunities aplenty, as well as ready-made , chamber groups, opera companies, patrons, publishers, and audiences all eager for new works. I suppose it’s all the more astonishing, then, that a composer, presumably not having next- works. I suppose it’s all the more astonishing, then, that a composer, presumably not having next- door knowledge of what his contemporaries in distant cities were up to, should produce such contemporaneous-sounding masterful works as these two piano trios entirely on the strength of his own natural talent.

In terms of content and style, Fesca’s trios are straight in line with Chopin’s G-Minor Piano Trio and with the piano trios of the 1830s and 1840s by Fesca’s German contemporaries such as Louis Spohr, Robert Volkmann, Robert and Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, and, of course, Felix Mendelssohn. If you know and love any or all of these trios, you will have a new love affair with these trios by Fesca.

As you can see from the disc timing in the headnote, these are not slight or lightweight compositions. Each trio lasts for over 30 minutes, and each, in a minor key, is filled with lots of Romantic Sturm und Drang and memorable mellifluous melodies. It’s also interesting to note that Fesca’s trios display a touch of the operatic, more so than do the trios of the above-named composers. The violin and cello tend to engage in somewhat more virtuosic showmanship, like opera divas, than they do in Felix Mendelssohn’s trios, which can sometimes sound more like piano concertos with violin and cello accompaniments; and in Fesca’s trios, the cessation or slowing down of the running piano figuration for the lyrical string episodes almost imparts to those episodes the impression of set operatic arias.

Truth be told, this is not my first encounter with Fesca. Some time ago I acquired two earlier CPO releases, one (999 889-2), containing the composer’s Symphony No. 1 and three overtures, and the other (999 617-2) containing two of the composer’s mixed woodwind, string, and piano septets. So I shouldn’t have been surprised at how substantive and arrestingly beautiful these two trios are; except that I was, probably because I hadn’t listened to those earlier recordings in quite a while, and I’d simply forgotten how impressive Fesca’s music is.

According to imslp, Fesca wrote no fewer than six piano trios, but he also composed piano quartets, string quartets, at least three symphonies, lots of solo piano music and songs, and three operas, one of which, dating from 1847, is his five-act heroic-romantic opera Il Trovatore to a libretto by Frederick Schmetzer. So far, CPO has the lock on Fesca, having produced many more recordings of his works than show up at ArkivMusic. If you go to CPO’s web site, you will find recordings of all three of Fesca’s symphonies, a three-disc set of his string quartets with the Diogenes Quartet—a group I’ve had occasion to rave about in previous reviews—a disc of flute quartets with the Linos Ensemble, the above-mentioned septets, and now these two trios, of which there are four more. Having heard this latest release, I can say that I want them all, and there’s a very good chance this will be on my 2015 Want List. But then, do keep in mind that he who is writing this review is a total sucker for chamber works in this genre and of this time period, and not restricted to specimens from the German school.

When it comes to the Paian Trio, or Trio Paian as it bills itself, only the name is new. The ensemble, originally formed in 2002, used to go by the name of the Arion Trio, but which Arion Trio I can’t tell you because the name appears to have been appropriated by more than one ensemble. As I’ve observed before, we really need an international registry such as we have for Internet domain names. The Trio Paian may have adopted its new name for the purpose of avoiding this very confusion. In any event, the three players that currently make up the ensemble—Ilian Garnetz, violin; Marin Smesnoi, cello; and Alexandra Neumann, piano—are really excellent. They play these two trios with gusto and all the Romantic passion the music calls for and deserves.

For anyone open to welcoming unfamiliar acquaintances into their circle of friends and significant others, I would urge you to throw open your doors to these stunningly beautiful piano trios by Alexander Ernst Fesca. You won’t regret it. Jerry Dubins

This article originally appeared in Issue 38:6 (July/Aug 2015) of Fanfare Magazine.

Pip Eastop’s Comments from the Mozart Liner Notes Pip Eastop’s Comments from the Mozart Liner Notes

It has been more than two centuries since Mozart composed the music performed on this recording and during that time the horn, an instrument he loved and knew well, has evolved substantially. During the nineteenth century it grew valves and extra loops of tubing; it ceased to be a ‘hand horn’, or a ‘natural horn’, and emerged from experimentation and confusion as a fully chromatic instrument. The response by later composers to these changes was to write music that increasingly exploited the horn’s new ability to play not only any note with a full and sonorous resonance but also any note with a closed, ‘stopped’ sound. The evolution of the horn continued with a widening of its and an increase in dynamic range to suit the music of Wagner, Mahler, Richard Strauss and many others. Today, the horn’s modern character can best be experienced by hearing the way it is used in orchestral film scores to depict the archetypal ‘hero’, conveying such attributes as strength, courage, seriousness, stability and control. Before the horn ‘grew up’ its character was altogether rougher, wilder, more unpredictable, playful and idiosyncratic—perhaps more Robin Hood than James Bond.

It is in getting from one note to the next that the mechanics of the instrument and the technique of its playing are so different between the old and the new. This difference is much larger than with instruments that did not have such a marked metamorphosis in their historical development—that is, the addition of valves. Stringed instruments are still essentially the same as they were in Mozart’s day. Woodwind instruments have gained more projection and refinement but are essentially still pipes with vent holes. The piano, Mozart’s favourite instrument of all, has been developed and refined in countless ways but still involves the mechanism of fingers pushing keys to make hammers hit strings. Changes to other instruments have been in timbre and power. But from hand horn to modern horn the change has been more profound.

Without doubt Mozart would have loved the modern valved horn with its fully chromatic ability, and if his friend, the horn player Joseph Leutgeb, had possessed one then Mozart would have written entirely different music for him. Mozart’s sound wonderful played on the modern horn, of course, but inevitably, along with the broader, warmer voice and gains in both smoothness and uniformity of timbre across the entire range, some of the colour and drama that Mozart would have expected is lost.

To play the hand horn is to wrestle with nature. While the modern valved horn will cruise comfortably through most things in the classical repertoire the hand horn simply doesn’t want to cooperate with at least half of the notes Mozart threw at it. Its natural array of pitches, the series, does not align with any kind of equal or non-equal temperament or any sort of scale, whether major, minor, chromatic or whatever. Melodies have to be physically wrenched into shape from both ends of the instrument; at the narrow end by strenuous techniques of breath and lip, and at the other end, within the throat of the bell flare, by rapid manipulations of the right hand for correcting and continuously adjusting the intonation of every one of the instrument’s naturally occurring tones. This right-hand technique unavoidably alters both loudness and timbre from one note to the next, often quite drastically, and it is this phenomenon that accounts for most of the differences in musical effect between the classical hand horn and the modern horn.

After the development of valves, the ancestral hand horn did not disappear. It remained, as it was in the eighteenth century, arguably one of the most perfect of all instruments in its simple emulation of natural forms such as cow horns or large sea shells. It is nothing more than a long, narrow, conical brass tube with a small hole in which to blow at one end and a bigger hole where the sound emerges at the other end. It starts at a diameter of about 8mm (about one third of an inch) and continuously widens along its length until it ends with a dramatic widening into a flared bell of about one foot in diameter. For convenience and comfort hand horns are coiled into loops and are traditionally played with the bell held to the right, pointing backwards and to the side at about waist level. These days we call it the ‘natural horn’ or ‘hand horn’, to differentiate it from its modern descendant, the ‘’—a poorly named grandchild since there is nothing particularly French about it. Despite the visual complexity of its convoluted plumbing, the modern valved horn can be understood Despite the visual complexity of its convoluted plumbing, the modern valved horn can be understood simply as a combination of twelve differently lengthed hand horns into one super-instrument (perhaps ‘Dodecahorn’ would be a better name for it). The modern horn player switches instantly from one length to another by means of finger-operated valves. It is actually possible to play an entire Mozart horn on just one of the twelve component instruments of a modern horn using hand-horn techniques rather than by employing the valve mechanisms. However, this is not generally done because the merging of twelve instruments invariably causes a compromise in quality to each one. Also, it has to be said that there is something very pure and satisfying about playing great works by Mozart on such a wonderfully simple instrument.

The complexity of the modern horn conceals any resemblance to its ancient, naturally occuring ancestors whereas the simplicity of the hand horn makes such a visual connection obvious. Although a spirally curved cone is a complex shape and difficult to make it is an easy structure to understand, being essentially a tube which gradually widens. Molluscs and cows grow their curved cones naturally and unconsciously, but humans have needed many centuries to learn first how to copy and then to extend the concept, fabricating delicate coils of accurately tapered metal tubing far greater in length than animal horns. Historically, advances in metal-working technology have been driven by this need to make horns longer than those provided by nature. The extra length is desired because short, naturally occurring horns allow only the lowest note of the harmonic series to be played (the so-called ‘fundamental’), all the other ones being too high to play comfortably. Many ancient cultures understood this. of bronze, silver and gold were discovered in Tutenkhamun’s tomb and the Romans used brass and copper horns and trumpets for military purposes. In the bronze age the Celts had their ‘’, the Scandinavians had their ‘’ and in Ireland they made fabulous bronze horns shaped like those of the now extinct giant bison.

During Mozart’s time hand horns were available in a range of fifteen different lengths, from the shortest in the key of C (alto) at eight feet four inches (2.54 meters), to the longest in B flat (basso) at an impressive nineteen feet (5.79 meters). The length, or key, favoured by Mozart was somewhere in the middle, the E flat horn, at about fourteen feet long. The instrument used in this recording is a modern copy of an 1830 Ignaz Lorenz of Linz, made in Bavaria by Engelbert Schmid.

The standard classical pitch used these days for (so-called) ‘historically informed performance’ is somewhat lower than modern pitch, where A is set to vibrate at 440 cycles per second. Orchestras such as The Hanover Band usually tune A to 430Hz for music of the classical period, and this is the pitch used in this recording for the four concertos. For the quintet recording, due to the absence of woodwind instruments which are specifically built to be played at 430 and have far less flexibility to adjust pitch than stringed or brass instruments, it was possible to take the pitch down approximately one third of a semitone further, to 421 cycles per second. This is exactly the frequency of the tuning fork that belonged to Mozart.

At several points during the horn concertos Mozart indicates that the soloist should play a short unaccompanied passage, a ‘cadenza’, of his or her own invention. This is a difficult task for the modern horn player: adding anything of value to historical works of great musical genius is challenging, to say the least. Because of the instrument’s natural simplicity the task of cadenza- writing for the hand horn in Mozart is somewhat easier than it is for the modern instrument. When playing the fully chromatic modern horn it is hard to be constantly mindful of avoiding anything which would have been technically unfeasible during the classical period. The use of valves, however carefully and tastefully applied, creates an effect impossible for the hand horn, so by playing on the type of horn Mozart knew one avoids such anachronisms. Removing that complication allows one to focus more on questions of musical material and style. In preparing the cadenzas for these performances I investigated those that Mozart took the trouble to write down (although he never composed any for horn). Searching through his published keyboard cadenzas I found that here, more than anywhere else, he explored chromatic harmonies with the greatest intensity and passion. In his later works the urge to delve deeper into chromaticism becomes increasingly obvious and this shows clearly in his horn-writing, where he pushes hard against the instrument’s inherent limitations. clearly in his horn-writing, where he pushes hard against the instrument’s inherent limitations.

In attempting to escape from the instrument’s constant pull towards E flat major, I have tried to stretch its scant chromatic capabilities as far as practically possible (in particular by using diminished harmonies) while attempting to keep within the spirit of Mozart’s horn-writing and what is known of his cadenza style. I can only apologize to the ghost of Mozart for any musical crimes I may have committed. In my defence (and in that of horn players everywhere), if a cadenza is indicated by Mozart we are obliged to do at least something.

Pip Eastop © 2015