Horn Trios
9 February 2025
Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank Centre
Artists
Freya Franzen violin / curator
Saul Lewis horn
Kristian Chong piano
Program
Koechlin Quatre petites pièces [9']
Banks Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano [16']
Interval [20']
Brahms Horn Trio in E flat [28']
Running time: approx. 1 hour and 10 minutes. Timings listed are approximate.
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Freya Franzan curator / violin
Freya Franzen began violin studies in Canberra at the age of six with Gillian Bailey-Graham, later continuing as a pre-tertiary student at the Canberra School of Music. In her final year of school, she was the recipient of the ACT Board of Secondary Studies Recognition of Excellence Award for Performing Arts (Music). Studying under Associate Professor Goetz Richter and Mr Christopher Kimber, Freya completed a Bachelor of Music (Performance) at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, graduating with First Class Honours in 2008.
In 2011 Freya was awarded a Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellowship, giving her the opportunity to play with, and be mentored by, the orchestra for a year. Having been through all the orchestras of the Canberra Youth Orchestra Society, and also participating in a number of Australian National Music Camps, Freya was aware of a very keen interest in orchestral repertoire, and this opportunity with the Sydney Symphony opened a very important door into the professional world of orchestral playing. Freya has since toured internationally
with the Sydney Symphony, held a position as a member of their Second Violin section, and performed with them as a soloist in Malcolm Arnold’s Concerto for two violins in Sydney’s City Recital Centre, Angel Place.
In 2012 Freya travelled to London to complete a Masters of Music at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama under Stephaine Gonley. During this time she was given numerous opportunities to play in leadership positions in the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra, and receive mentoring by members of the London Symphony Orchestra. The same year saw Freya attend the Salzburg Festival Masterclasses, studying with Professor Ulf Hoelscher, with whom she has continued to travel to have lessons over the past few years.
2014 saw Freya win her current position as a member of the Melbourne Symphony’s second violin section, which she loves being a part of. Besides orchestral life, she regularly engages in chamber music and is a founding member of the Melbourne Ensemble.
Saul Lewis horn Kristian Chong piano
Saul Lewis has been a member of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Horn section since 2009 and holds the position of Principal Third Horn. After completing his A.S.C.M. at the Sydney Conservatorium, Saul was awarded a Big Brother Scholarship and studied with many of the pre-eminent horn players in London and Germany. He later completed his Masters Degree in Performance in Sydney under Tony Buddle and became Principal 3rd Horn with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra in 1994.
He has played with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony and Australian Chamber Orchestra as well as being active in the commercial scene on film scores. Saul was a founding member of the Sydney wind quintet Enigma Five and was reviewed for his ‘fine horn playing’ in a concerto performance with Cove Chamber Ensemble in 1991. He won the position of Principal Third Horn with the MSO in 2010 and is also teaching at Monash University and the University of Melbourne.
Position supported by Cecilie Hall and the late Hon Michael Watt KC
One of Australia’s leading pianists, Kristian Chong has performed throughout Australia and internationally. His performance schedule finds him in demand as concerto soloist, chamber musician and solo recitalist.
As concerto soloist he has appeared with the Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne, Queensland, Sydney and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, and orchestras in the UK, New Zealand and China. Highlights have included Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto with the Sydney Symphony and Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in Beijing and Canberra.
Described by The Age as ‘a true chamber musician at work’, Kristian is highly sought after with extensive collaborations with ensembles such as the Tinalley and Australian String Quartets, cellist Li-Wei Qin, flautist Megan Sterling and baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes. His festival appearances include the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Adelaide, Coriole, Huntington Estate, Mimir Chamber Music and Bangalow Festivals.
Kristian studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Piers Lane and Christopher Elton, with Stephen McIntyre at the University of Melbourne, where Kristian currently teaches piano and chamber music, and with Noreen Stokes and Stefan Ammer at the Elder Conservatorium.
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Program Notes
This program of three horn trios is very much inspired by the late Barry Tuckwell OBE, AC (1931–2020). The Melbourneborn French horn player, conductor and teacher remains the world’s most recorded horn soloist.
The horn trio comprises of French horn, violin and piano which enables a versatile sound-world. The warmth of the horn paired with the sonority of the violin create a unique combination, sometimes working as a unit, and other times drawing on their innate timbral differences. With the strength and percussion of the piano, the trio radiates a robust warmth, capable of impressive power, and also delicate subtlety.
It wouldn’t be right not to mention the idea behind this program: it is a tribute to the great recording of the horn trios you will hear today, by the highly esteemed group of Barry Tuckwell (horn), Brenton Langbein (violin) and Maureen Jones (piano)—so good they didn’t even have a name! It was produced by Ex Libris label in Switzerland in April 1987.
– Freya Franzen, curator
Charles Koechlin (1867–1950)
Quatre petites pièces
How do we define ‘contemporary music’? The term describes the works of today— but it’s been around far longer. In 1948, composer Charles Koechlin was elected an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music. What sounded new to Koechlin was the fusion of history with the trends of his day. With open ears, he embraced styles as diverse as medieval music and film scores. Koechlin’s turn-of-the-century Quatre Petites Pièces emerged from the classics
that inspired him, and the French traditions he actively helped to form. Its charmingly tranquil second movement echoes the warm, romantic sentiment of Saint-Saëns’ The Swan. The third movement’s rippling piano is reminiscent of Debussy, whose works Koechlin orchestrated, while the delightful Scherzando recalls the rollicking horn concertos of older times—think Mozart’s fourth concerto and Strauss’ first. Through Koechlin, we hear stories of music that came before, and the evolution of a contemporary voice that would continue beyond him.
Stephanie Eslake © 2025
Don Banks (1923–1980)
Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano
A composer is caught in a scandalous affair. A skeleton rides a ghostly horse into the darkness. A scientist discovers radioactive monsters in a greenhouse. You may be wondering what unites these unusual tales, and the answer is just as unusual: Don Banks. The beloved Australian composer scored several mid-century films alongside his concert works. These are three of his eerie cinematic plots—and they may inform the way you listen to his 1962 Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano. It’s mysterious and moody; exactly the type of music you’d hear on the silver screen. It’s also atonal, which means it shifts away from Western classical traditions in favour of a different, daring sound. And indeed Banks was a daring artist. The 1923-born composer served with the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps before learning composition in Europe. In 1952, he co-founded the Australian Musical Association in London (with no less than
composer Margaret Sutherland!). How better to advocate for Australian music than to write it, and have it performed by Australian-born musicians? This is how his horn trio began: its original musicians included Barry Tuckwell, pianist Maureen Jones, and violinist Brenton Langbein.
The first movement is slow (lento) but abrupt, owing to contrasting dynamics from very quiet (pianissimo) to thrillingly loud (fortissimo). Unsettling piano, creeping plucked violin (pizzicato), and sly horn interact with the suspense of a black-and-white spy film. The second movement reveals an expressive and enigmatic horn line, while detached (staccato) notes and a speedy tempo lead towards the feverish, angsty climax. Stephanie Eslake © 2025
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Trio in E flat major, Op. 40, for horn, violin, and piano
I. Andante – Poco più animato – Tempo I – Poco più animato –Tempo I
II. Scherzo (Allegro) – Trio (Molto meno allegro) – Scherzo
III. Adagio mesto
IV. Finale (Allegro con brio)
Brahms composed this trio during late spring and early summer 1865. He began work in Baden on 6 May and sent a copy of the completed score, by post, from his summer lodging in Lichtenthal (‘It sits on a height, and I look out over all the mountains and lanes’) to his publisher Simrock in Bonn on 4 July. A year later, Brahms took the Trio on ‘a little concert and business trip’. He gave its premiere in Zürich, for the local Quartet Society, on 28 November 1865, with a Herr Gläss on horn. The work was repeated in Basle, and then in December for the Carlsruhe Festival, Brahms himself again on piano. But it took
some years for the Trio to be publicly accepted. Clara Schumann noted that when she played it in Vienna in 1870 the audience ‘failed to understand this interesting and inspiring work’. Indeed, it was not until 1879 that Theodor Billroth, who’d first met Brahms at the Zürich premiere, wrote to him, again from Vienna: ‘Incidentally, your Horn Trio has had an enormous success here recently. I’d have scarcely expected it with such deeply felt music, all the more so since previously the public seemed disinclined to give it an attentive hearing. How curious these changes in audiences are.’
Despite the growing use at the time of various types of fully chromatic valve horns (Schumann called for one in his Adagio and Allegro for horn of 1849), Brahms always preferred the traditional natural horn, or Waldhorn, an instrument both his father and he himself, in his youth, had played. Though unable to produce a full scale, except at the top of its range or by means of dexterous hand-stopping of the bell, the natural horn could still be played effectively in a range of keys by using a set of crooks (extension tubing) that lowered the sounding pitch of the fixed tubing by various amounts. In a letter to Albert Dietrich, organiser of Brahms’s Basle concerts, in which he recommended the Trio ‘with good conscience’ as ideal for a chamber soirée, Brahms specifically added: ‘Your horn player would do me a very special favour if he would [...] practise the Waldhorn for a few weeks to be able to play it on that’. Moreover, on the title page of the published score, Brahms implied that he’d rather the horn part be played on cello, or later the viola, than on a valve horn (as Hans Richter had done in the 1870 Vienna performance). On this he never relented, even telling his horn-player friend, August Cordes, ‘Never play [the trio] on a valve horn’.
Brahms’ biographer Richard Specht called this the ‘Wunderhorn’ Trio, and likened it to the fairy-tale world of Brahms’
Eichendorff settings, one of which, among his Op.17 songs, also featured horn. Each of the movements was, for Specht, ‘a German woodland song that awakes old legends’. Brahms, specifically referring to the opening theme, told a friend that he’d been inspired by watching a sunrise in the Black Forest. In the dreamy first movement, Brahms enhanced the songlike feel by doing away with the usual weighty central developmental episode. Instead, the two themes (Andante in 2/4 time, and Poco più animato in 9/8) are alternated and varied. The second movement is framed by a motoric Allegro, rhythmically incisive and harmonically questing, surrounding a calm central episode. The sad third movement is thought to have been a musical response to the recent death of Brahms’s mother, Johanna. The horn briefly refers to the folksong Dort in den Weiden steht ein Haus (There in the meadows stands a house) whose traditional tune is shared with the Lutheran chorale Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten (If thou but suffer God to guide thee) which Brahms also used in another memorial for his mother, the German Requiem. The same tune, recast in hunting-horn mode, becomes the theme of the finale, which also recollects in mood and impetus Mozart’s most famous Horn Concerto finale (K 495).
Graeme Skinner © 2008
Sidney Myer MSO Trust Fund
