Composer: Gavin Higgins
Performer: Ben Goldscheider
Orchestra: BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Conductor: Jaime Martín
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Lyrita
Catalogue: SRCD440
Release: 2025
Size: 623 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Concerto for horn and orchestra
01. I. Understorey
02. II. Overstorey
03. III. Mycelium Rondo
Fanfare, Air and Flourishes for solo horn
04. I. Fanfare
05. II. Air
06. III. Flourishes
Gavin Higgins has spoken evocatively – and perhaps romantically -about the music of the forest which surrounded him in his childhood: sounds of foxes and deer mingled with brass bands & church choir. Nature and music, he says, are powerfully linked in his mind.
Almost as soon as he could speak, Gavin was given a cornet to blow and grew up playing in the brass band conducted by his grandfather and populated by most of his family. A scholarship to specialist music school in Manchester and subsequent study at the Royal Northern College of Music meant that he moved on to the orchestral French horn.
Now, as a composer chiefly working in the orchestral & opera world, Gavin still writes for brass bands and has even put his two musical traditions on the stage together in an award winning Concerto Grosso for Brass Band and Orchestra. But the pieces on this disc which feature the French horn – Horn Concerto and Fanfare, Air and Flourish – mark the first time that he has highlighted his own instrument in the solo slot. As ever, it was a personal connection which sparked the idea of the Horn Concerto – an approach from Ben Goldscheider, made in the full knowledge that this would reunite Gavin with his younger self.
Take a glimpse:
Nicolas Dautricourt: Elgar – Violin Concerto, Salut d’Amour; Delius – Suite (24/96 FLAC)
Damerau, Luisi: Martin: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (24/96 FLAC)
Clarissa Bevilacqua plays Augusta Read Thomas – Dream Catcher (24/96 FLAC)
Tingaud: Fauré – Pelléas et Mélisande Suite, Prométhée, Shylock, Songs (24/96 FLAC)