Wednesday 29 April 2009

Mozart KV 370b+371

I'm learning some Mozart I've never learned before, for my end-of-year exam. What's this, you say? How can a horn player get this far and not have learned all the Mozart solo repertoire there is?

Well, simply put, when I started learning the horn there were fewer known fragments of the work. Even now it can be difficult to get hold of. Some recordings I have seem to mis-label the first movement as being KV 307b instead of 370b. I've been able to find two published editions, reconstructed by two different people. The manuscript for 371, the Concert Rondo, was only completed in 1989 and previous editions are missing bits.

This morning I have been looking at the score of 370b in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe Digital Mozart Edition, and comparing that to my Brietkopf edition, completed and edited by Robert D. Levin, which arrived in the post yesterday. In bar 67 I don't know that I agree with the scoring of the piano reduction; I would put a concert E in the bass and in the second half of the bar the horn plays a concert B-flat which is lower than any of the piano notes. This is easy enough to change, but it will have to be the piano part that changes. And in bar 128 there is a quaver-and-two-semi-quavers figure which is written as a triplet in the score. Not sure which I'll do there.

I'm still waiting for the Sikorski edition and the Birdalone edition to arrive. It will be interesting to compare them. I'd love a facsimile of the manuscript but I don't quite want to spend $125 on it.

Monday 20 April 2009

The Garlickhythe Occasionals and the London Gallery Quire

Long time no post, I know! I've been working hard and learning a lot... and recently I've been having internet problems at home, which tends to scupper posting a bit.

I will be playing the serpent twice this weekend! Once will be with the Garlickhythe Occasionals, at a Ceilidh in Highgate on Saturday night.

For the more devoutly inclined, on Sunday at 6.30pm I'm playing with the London Gallery Quire at Choral Evensong in Dulwich at the Chapel of God's Gift.