4 more Bs from Hornspieler

[Hornspieler]

Well, you seemed to enjoy Hornspieler and the 3(4) Bs, so here are four more:

Borsdorf, Busby, Brain and Bradley.

Four famous names among hornplayers, but first, please read this link, before I add further to this thread:

http://lso.co.uk/more/blog/307-27the-lso-in-world-war-i-the-sad-tale-of-adolph-borsdorf

Interested? Then please add your comments before I write further.

HS

[pastoralguy]

Is there any advantage to a horn section using a 'matched' set of instruments (as I believe the Berliner Philharmoniker do), or does it not really matter? Obviously, any musician wants the best instrument he/she can afford but would refusing to use a particular 'brand' of horn rule a potential player out?

Just curious.

[pastoralguy]

Very interesting and sad story, HS.

I did hear a story that, during WW2, there was a female violinist in the Scottish Orchestra who was of German origin. She was so badly bullied by the other members of the orchestra that she killed herself by throwing herself down the stairwell from her top story flat in Glasgow.

Very sad times.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Is there any advantage to a horn section using a 'matched' set of instruments (as I believe the Berliner Philharmoniker do), or does it not really matter? Obviously, any musician wants the best instrument he/she can afford but would refusing to use a particular 'brand' of horn rule a potential player out?
.

For the answer to that, listen to the Vienna Philharmonic's horns. Simple superb.

[Hornspieler]

Is there any advantage to a horn section using a 'matched' set of instruments (as I believe the Berliner Philharmoniker do), or does it not really matter? Obviously, any musician wants the best instrument he/she can afford but would refusing to use a particular 'brand' of horn rule a potential player out?

Just curious.

A matched set? Yes and no.

An ill-matched set, such as narrow bore "French" horn, would certainly be a problem - which is why Dennis had to give up using his narrow bore piston horn (The famous french horn which had been found in a cupboard at Covent Garden and with which he had made his famous recording with Denis Matthews of the Beethoven sonata and his Britten Serenade with Peter Peers, when he joined the Philharmonia orchestra, who were already (as were most players) converted from "French" to "German" with rotary valves instead of pistons and a much wider bore.

Aubrey was disgusted when told of this and said that he was "ashamed of the boy" when he learned of this (but Aubrey had fought against the thicker more euphonium-like sound of the wider bore instruments which, apart from some amateur and military band players still played on what we all chose to knickname "Peashooters") but this does not mean that sections all played on instruments made by the same manufacturer or even the posessing the same facilities .

Dennis, or the 3rd horn would almost certainly have opted for a facility to play the higher notes, so would have a fourth valve putting the instrument into B flat or even F alto as well as the conventional horn in F, but 2nd and 4th horns would be content with playing mostly on the longer and sweeter sounding F horn with a fourth valve offering the facility of B flat alto for the higher notes.

Of course, there were no hard and fast rules just an acceptance of what blended nicely and on such occasions as gramophone sessions there might well appear to be a total mismatch of instruments.

The VSO is different. The horn section all play on the identical "Viennese" horns which have a system not of rotary valves or pistons, but Sleeve valves which look upside down but have something approaching the quality of sound of the french horn and have changes of pitch by means of different lengths of crook (that curley pipe between mouthpiece and rest of the instrument).

Enough for now, but do keep asking questions

HS

[Once Was 4]

Very interesting and sad story, HS.

I did hear a story that, during WW2, there was a female violinist in the Scottish Orchestra who was of German origin. She was so badly bullied by the other members of the orchestra that she killed herself by throwing herself down the stairwell from her top story flat in Glasgow.

Very sad times.

Yes a very sad story; Borsdorf's great friend Franz Paersch (who played 1st horn in the premiere of Elgar's 1st Symphony with his son Otto on 4th - Otto taught a lot of the older professionals who were still around in Manchester during my student and early professional days) had a similar history with the Halle Orchestra in WW1 and developed an insomnia problem which ended his playing days.

Borsdorf was much admired by Elgar who often consulted him about horn parts and there is a letter extant from Borsdorf to Elgar saying that, yes, a certain passage was playable but it would mean him having to practice it!

Just one thing: that great horn historian Reginald Morley-Pegge wrote that he played in a concert next to Borsdorf the week before he died. This implies that he did go on playing after leaving the LSO.

[pastoralguy]

Many thanks. Very interesting.

I would LOVE to play the horn in the Elgar symphonies. Some absolutely glorious moments!

[gradus]

It's a poignant story but in the context of WW1 perhaps unsurprising, didn't we go on to intern UK residents with Italian and German names on the Isle of Man? Special pleading from the powerful for exemptions didn't help much either.
I seem to remember that Beecham wrote that he had resisted a demand that he should drop German and Austrian music from his programmes during WW2 by telling the complainant that he would if the complainant would agreed to sell his valuable collection of teutonic paintings. No more was said.

[MrGongGong]

Many thanks. Very interesting.

I would LOVE to play the horn in the Elgar symphonies. Some absolutely glorious moments!

BINGO

[LeMartinPecheur]

It's a poignant story but in the context of WW1 perhaps unsurprising, didn't we go on to intern UK residents with Italian and German names on the Isle of Man? S

Gradus: this sounds more like WW2. Italy was on our side in WW1: they were mainly squared up against the Austro-Hungarian empire IIRC.

The Isle of Man was certainly a place of internment in WW2 - was it in WW1? (Too late to go Googling - I'm off to bed!)

[BBMmk2]

How very sad to read this HB. But most interesting at the same time. I hope the LSO never forget this very fine horn player.

[gradus]

Gradus: this sounds more like WW2. Italy was on our side in WW1: they were mainly squared up against the Austro-Hungarian empire IIRC.

The Isle of Man was certainly a place of internment in WW2 - was it in WW1? (Too late to go Googling - I'm off to bed!)

Yes I've confused the two wars although internment of 'aliens' occurred in WW1 too.

[Hornspieler]

It's a poignant story but in the context of WW1 perhaps unsurprising, didn't we go on to intern UK residents with Italian and German names on the Isle of Man? Special pleading from the powerful for exemptions didn't help much either.
I seem to remember that Beecham wrote that he had resisted a demand that he should drop German and Austrian music from his programmes during WW2 by telling the complainant that he would if the complainant would agreed to sell his valuable collection of teutonic paintings. No more was said.

My friend Alfredo Campoli told me that, before WW2, he was Alf Campbell, an Italian born violinist who played café music in London, but he was swept up by the authorities along with all the others whose nationalities suggested that they could be spies or saboteurs and was interned on the Isle of Man.

Having nothing else to do, he decided to devote himself to some serious violin practise and emerged from his detention with a much improved technique and the new name of Alfredo Campoli

The rest, as they say is history.

I have yet to hear a better exponent of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto than "Camps" (as we knew him).

Let's get back to the 4 Bs; starting with Borsdorf.

Adolf Borsdorf had 14 children. One of them was mentioned in the link which I posted as having achieved fame in America. I knew nothing of this, but I did know of two horn playing sons, Emil and Francis, born around the turn of the century and taught to play by their father.

At the start (or maybe before) WW1, they changed their surnames to Bradley, to avoid the "bricks through the window" brigade, but only Emil returned to the name Borsdorf after things quietened down in the 1920s so Francis retained the name Bradley, until his death in 1975. I met them both, when I was recruited by the BBC into the Light Music Unit - (I hope my teacher, Aubrey Brain, was not too dismayed) and I shall return to the subject of the brothers Borsdorf in a later post.

Please take another look at the link which I posted in my message #1 and possibly save it
for future reference on this thread.

HS

[pastoralguy]

You knew Campoli, HS?! One of my violin heros. A very under-rated player and his neglect is one of the great disappointments of the history of the Gramophone.

His recording of the Elgar concerto would be a Desert Island Disc for me.

[Hornspieler]

Let's get back to the 4 Bs; starting with Borsdorf.

Adolf Borsdorf had 14 children. One of them was mentioned in the link which I posted as having achieved fame in America. I knew nothing of this, but I did know of two horn playing sons, Emil and Francis, born around the turn of the century and taught to play by their father.

At the start (or maybe before) WW1, they changed their surnames to Bradley, to avoid the "bricks through the window" brigade, but only Emil returned to the name Borsdorf after things quietened down in the 1920s so Francis retained the name Bradley, until his death in 1975. I met them both, when I was recruited by the BBC into the Light Music Unit - (I hope my teacher, Aubrey Brain, was not too dismayed) and I shall return to the subject of the brothers Borsdorf in a later post.

Please take another look at the link which I posted in my message #1 and possibly save it
for future reference on this thread.

HS

Aubrey Brain taught me how to play the horn to a professional standard.

But it was Francis Bradley (neé Borsdoff) who taught me how to be a professional musician and to avoid the pitfalls and disasters awaiting an aspiring but inexperienced eighteen year old who had no conception of the disappointments and physical and mental stresses of pursuing a career in a profession where there is always somebody awaiting the opportunity to take possession of one's chair.

Here are few quotes that I remember:

This is very tiring profession. If you try to play everything in front of you , your lip will soon tire, but you've got to know what you can afford to leave out.

That advice stood me in good stead when I split my lip on the street outside the hall in a frozen January after successfully getting that high note towards the end of the New World symphony in the afternoon rehearsal. I knew I could not possibly reach it in the evening performance so I just left it out.
(Two members of the audience approached me after the performance and congratulated me on my playing. One of them said "... you played that high note in the last movement so softly that I could barely hear it!")

Never argue with the conductor. Whatever he says, he is right and you are wrong.
Your chance will come to get your revenge later.

.. and it did - on more than one occasion!

Never fool around on your instrument in the band room. You're not a good enough player to do that.

Good advice, you never know who is listening.

I played on many occasions with Francis and his younger brother Emil when engaged by the BBC Light Music Unit, which included Michael Krein's London Light Concert Orchestra, Monia Lita's, 20th Century Serenaders, Reg Kilby's Casino Orchestra and Lou Whiteson's Majestic Orchestra. (Actually, the players were the same, but the conductors were different and the Leader and sub leader would change places.)

I retired from playing at the age of 40, after 22 years in the profession.
When asked why, my reply was, I hope, a modest one:

"If anyone can honestly say that they had ever heard me play badly, they would have to have a long memory - not a short one".

Francis Bradley died in 1975. He was still playing almost up to the time of his death.
He obviously took his own advice and knew what he could afford to leave out!

HS