Ossia Concert- October 4
Several of the ESM horns are involved in the upcoming Ossia concert on Thursday, October 4, 2012 at 8:00PM in Eastman East Wing 415. Ossia is a student-run organization that performs works by contemporary composers. The program includes Ligeti’s Hamburg Concerto, a work which features a horn soloist with chamber orchestra with prominent parts scored for four natural horns.
Conductor Jerry Hou working with the horns. On natural horns, Erin Futterer, Russell Rybicki, Lauren Becker, and Daniel Brottman. Horn soloist, ESM alumna Lizz Porter (BM 2002)
Junior hornist Daniel Brottman sums up the novelty of this work:
The Hamburg Concerto is one of the last works written by György Ligeti (1923 – 2006). The music uses one solo horn and four natural horns (natural horns were in common use until about the mid-19th century) in creative, expressive, and evocative combinations, along with a chamber orchestra. In the liner notes to the CD “The Ligeti Project, Vol. IV,” the composer writes:
In this piece I experimented with very unusual non-harmonic sound spectra. In the small orchestra there are four natural horns, each of which can produce the 2nd to the 16th overtone. By providing each horn or group of horns with different fundamentals I was able to construct novel sound spectra from the resulting overtones. These harmonies, which had never been used before, sound “weird” in relation to harmonic spectra. I developed both “weird” consonant and dissonant harmonies, with complex beats. Horns blend very well together, and to enrich the sound further, the two clarinetists play basset horns. Even though it is replete with spectra of strange beats, the resulting overall sound is soft and mellow.
Ligeti had written using the horn in this fashion previously in his Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano, a monumental work from both a compositional and performance standpoint. Both the Trio and Concerto represent substantive additions to the horn repertoire in the latter half of the 20th century that are sure to endure by merit of their ingenuity, craft, challenge, and beauty.
