Dennis Brain: A Life in Music

Appendix C: Talking About the Horn

286 Talking About the Horn A P P E N D I X C Talking About the Instrument: No. 7, The Horn Illustrated Talk by Dennis Brain General Overseas Service Pre-Recorded on March 19, 1956 Recorded Talks Reference Number: TOX 39218 Broadcast on Tuesday March 27, 1956, 06:30–07:00 GMT The second radio talk was “No. 7, The Horn” in the series Talking About the Instrument for the General Overseas Service. The BBC correspondence files describe the stages of its planning. Brain received a contract for this broadcast on March 8, 1956. Rosemary Jellis, Overseas Talks department, wrote to Miss Firth, Music Bookings that “At last we have nailed Dennis Brain down to record his programme in this series on Monday, 19 March . . .” It was broadcast on Tuesday March 27, 1956, at 06.30–07.00 Greenwich Mean Time and repeated the next day (Wednesday, March 28) at 02.30 a.m. GMT and Thursday, March 29, at 19.30 GMT. We do not know whether a recording has been preserved. Most likely, as with an enormous number of his BBC recorded programs, it had a shelf life and after that had expired, it would have been destroyed. The only evidence of it, therefore, is the entry in the “program as broadcast” file for General Overseas Service.1 The program included excerpts from the solo, chamber, and orchestral repertoire, played on his 1818 hand horn, on a length of hosepipe, and on a modern instrument with valves. After playing live extracts, he included excerpts of recorded repertoire, featuring mostly his father, Aubrey, in solo, chamber, and orchestral works with the LSO, with “Symphony Orchestra ” (Aubrey Brain’s name not mentioned), the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and with Rudolf Serkin and Adolf Busch in the famous second recording of the Brahms Horn Trio. For the final recorded excerpt, he chose a recording that features him with Neill Sanders, playing with members of the London Baroque Ensemble, in a work by Ditttersdorf, his Partita No. 3 in D major. The whole of this work was recorded for EMI Parlophone in 1953. As with the other discs, he played only a short fragment of the recording for the program. Even without a script, the program looks interesting enough (see below), and one can only guess at what it would Talking About the Horn 287 have been like with a script. Alas, the General Overseas Service does not generally preserve the scripts to talks.2 Music “Live” Dennis Brain (1818 Horn) Four improvised passages 00'09", 00'09", 00'10", 00'07" Theme from Horn Sonata Beethoven Non copyright A. D. Peters 00'19" Theme from Till Eulenspiegel 00'10". R. Strauss. Wiener Philharmoniker Verlag Dennis Brain (Hosepipe) Theme from Mendelssohn’s Nocturne from A Midsummer Night’s Dream 00'20" Mendelssohn. Breitkopf One improvised passage 00'12" Dennis Brain (Modern Horn) Four improvised passages 00'13", 00'11"; 00'07"; 00'08"; Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op.31. 01'20"; Benjamin Britten. Boosey and Hawkes Commercial Discs (Dubbed) Nocturne from A Midsummer Night’s Dream HMV DA 1318 01'42" Aubrey Brain (horn) with BBC Symphony Orchestra Romanze from 3rd Concerto in E-flat for Horn Koechel No. 447 (Mozart). HMV DB 3974 02'25" Aubrey Brain and the BBC Symphony Orchestra Overture to Prince Igor (Borodin) HMV D 1210 00'33" Symphony Orchestra Till Eulenspiegel (R. Strauss). HMV DB 2187 00'32" BBC Symphony Orchestra Partita No. 3 in D Major (Dittersdorf ed. Haas). PARL PMB 1008 00'53" London Baroque Ensemble Commercial Disc “Live” Trio in E-flat Major, Op.40 (Brahms) HMV DB 2106 06'55" Rudolf Serkin (piano); Adolf Busch (violin); Aubrey Brain (horn) ...