One Soul—Many Colors From Solo to Octet: The Horn in Original Works and Arrangements
Michael Horst
From a canzone by Giovanni Gabrieli dating back to around 1600 to a veritable world premiere: the historical spectrum covered by the compositions of this “Night of the Horns” spans roughly 400 years. Among them, there are old and new works, familiar and unfamiliar ones, solo and ensemble pieces, originals and arrangements. “I tried to divide the evening into three parts, introducing the sound of the horn from different perspectives,” Radek Baborák, curator of the program and a faculty member at the Barenboim- Said Akademie, describes the idea behind the musical selection. “In the first part, we find the sounds of the forest, hunting calls and hunting masses. The second part features original works for horn ensemble from the 20th century, and for the finale, we have chosen famous compositions arranged for horns. I would like to show how the sound of the horn has changed throughout the various epochs, but also that one thing has remained the same: the soul of the horn.” The evening begins with the Frenchman Charles Koechlin. A student of Gabriel Fauré and classmate of Maurice Ravel, he is known primarily for his exquisite orchestral music, in which impressionism and church modes left their traces, as did excursions into atonality. His symphonic poems inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which occupied him for 40 years, are especially charming. In Koechlin’s oeuvre, which includes 226 opus numbers, we also find a great many chamber music works, including a series of monodies for various wind instruments, short solo pieces from his later 20
