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Just to add my condolences and appreciation. His insightful posts and fascinating stories will be very much missed. Did he ever pen anything autobiographical? Or publish any memoirs? RIP Hornspeiler and thanks for your contributions, on here, and to our musical life.
He did publish a lot of his anecdotes on the Forum. He sent me, and probably others, a 52-page Word document collection of these, entitled BRAVO MAESTRO! - A few reminiscences and revelations about an orchestral player's career . If anyone would like a copy of this, PM me with an email address and I'll send it.
I remember a post in a thread about Bruckner 7, talking about the moment the horns come in after the quartet of Wagner tubas....
I exchanged a couple of postings with him once which establshed that he must have been playing in the BSO at the very first orchestral concert I attended, circa 1960, in Poole Cornwall. That is a gratifying serendipity to hold on to.
Another vignette from his past which I enjoyed, his friendship with Julian Bream in their National Service days, propping eachother up on parade after heavy nights gigging.....
Boarders may be interested in a transcription of a PM from HS to me, outlining his connections with music-making in Bournemouth:
I was with Charles Groves [ and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra] from 1958 to 62 when he resigned and [Constantin] Silvestri was appointed.
I left the [BSO] orchestra in 1966 to take over as General Manager of the Ulster Orchestra and invited him [CS] over to conduct the orchestra on several occasions.
Once, when he came to have a meal with us, my wife bought a fresh caught Lobster and made a lobster mayonnaise. The conversation went as follows:
CS: This mayonnaise is wonderful. Where you get this?
Wife: I made it.
CS: You make this? I don't believe - is so good.
I left Belfast in 1968 and returned to freelance playing - appearing frequently with the BSO where my friend Tim Brown (who I used to take to his nursery school when he was only four) was now the principal horn.
Silvestri was now a very sick man and I am glad that my wife, who was now back in the orchestra, and I were both playing at his last concert in Exeter (Don Quixote with Tortelier) In the interval we went into the conductor's room to talk to our Maestro and his last words to us as we left were addressed to my wife:
I haven’t PMd many on this forum but HS was one person with whom I did exchange PMs. When I was at school in the 50s we used to get reduced price tickets to concerts at Bristol’s Colston Hall, and I must have seen HS at a distance when the BOS was performing under Charles Groves. I have been greatly saddened to hear of the death of HS because he struck me as being really warm-hearted. Very sad.
Money can't buy you happiness............but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery - Spike Milligan
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