Horn and Electronics
In June 2024, Ben Goldscheider and Phil Dawson embarked on a project to deliver a recital programme at the Southbank Centre, presenting music exclusively for Horn and Electronics.
Four pieces were commissioned specially for this first concert, with help from the Marchus Trust, Camerata Pacifica and others.
Programme
Zoë Martlew: Nibiru for horn & live electronics
Alex Groves: Single Form (Dawn) for horn & live electronics
Thea Musgrave: Golden Echo III for horn & live electronics
Hildegard Westerkamp: Fantasie for horns III
Mark Simpson: Darkness Moves II for horn & live electronics
“Ben Goldscheider’s solo horn took centre stage in a rewarding and fascinating concert featuring new and older compositions that combined his instrument with live electronics” (****)
The concert featured three world premieres, by Zoe Martlew, Mark Simpson and Thea Musgrove, along with innovative works which combine the horn’s noble and heroic sound with live and fixed electronics.
Zoë Martlew's Nibiru is inspired by the prophecies of cataclysm from the encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object, supposed to take place in the early 21st century. Martlew describes her piece as opening with nuclear armageddon and ending with a vision of a new Eden, represented by 'the last known recording of a male Kauai O'o bird in Hawaii, calling for a mate that never came...'
Mark Simpson's Darkness Moves II takes its inspiration from the work and ideas of Belgian-born poet and artist Henri Michaux (1899-1984) whose experiments with the drug mescaline led him to 'inner vision that poured through his mind like weirdly agitated and vibrating film'.
Thea Musgrave's Golden ECHO III has a similar trajectory to Simpson's piece in that Musgrave wrote the original in 1986 for the International Horn Society when a solo horn player was accompanied by sixteen of his colleagues, this was developed into a more portable piece for solo horn and tape. Now for Golden ECHO III, Goldscheider has recorded the original sixteen-horn version, overdubbing the parts himself.
In Alex Groves’ Single Form (Dawn), the instrument’s harmonic series is extrapolated, layered and intensified creating a sonic sunrise spanning three octaves.
Hildegard Westerkamp’s Fantasie for Horns II pitches the live instrument into a conversation with pre-recorded car and boat horns, along with alphorns and natural phenomena that connect the instrument to its roots.
Goldscheider says: ‘I am personally fascinated by the speed of the technology and how, in surround sound, the eyes and the ears begin to deceive one another as the live horn playing intertwines with the electronics.
‘This programme aims to stimulate, to broaden perspectives and allow a glimpse into relatively unknown territory with the instrument that Robert Schumann calls “the soul of the orchestra”.’
