Berliner Philharmoniker Master Class - Horn

Hello, my name is Stefan de Laval-Jazierski and I'm in my 33rd season with the Berlin Philharmonic as a horn player, as you've maybe noticed because I have the horn here. And we want to take a look at a very important and beautiful piece of the horn repertoire, the Nocturne from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream. Mendelssohn wrote this piece when he was only 17 years old and it is a one of the jewels of the horn repertoire. It has a few difficulties and there are a few different possibilities for phrasing. One thing to remember in an audition situation is not to play it too slowly. It can be very tiring if it's played too slowly. It has to have the feeling of calm but not actually too slowly. Okay, we'll take it phrase by phrase. The dynamic is piano dolce. When you're playing it in the orchestra, there's a lot of other things going along, woodwinds, the rest of the horns, strings are playing, so you have to play it with the full sound. In an audition, just try to play with the most beautiful sound you can. Okay, that's the first phrase of this piece. There are two possibilities to play, to phrase it. One of them is to breathe after the F sharp in the fourth bar and that would be etc. The other possibility is to breathe after the E flat. I prefer actually breathing after the E flat because this piece is like poetry and in a poem the end of the sentence has to rhyme. So you have this measure one, two, three, four it's rhyming with one, two, three, four bars later. So you're both ending with an interval going down but some conductors like it one way, some conductors like it the other way. I think everyone should decide how they want to play it. The main thing is to keep the melody going, play with a beautiful legato and a beautiful sound and keep it sounding calm and simple. Now comes the third phrase. So this phrase starts forte and has a crescendo. This is the phrase that has to open up and really be like a tenor in the opera. So you have the octave, make sure that the top F sharp is tongue but still well connected. And then connect from the F sharp legato, play between the notes. And crescendo for the first two phrases and then diminuendo. And then it starts mezzo forte again. And here subito piano. And then really open it up for the two fermatas. Let the sound disappear and then continue with the last phrase of this solo. And this last phrase, since the last phrase ends on a note that's just one note per bar and not... I like the phrase after the F sharp. I'll demonstrate again here. Breathe there at the last time. The first time you should breathe because the phrase ends. It adds a bit of more symmetry to the phrase, the ending of the phrase. But the last time since you're ending on a single note, I think it's better to breathe after the F sharp. Well, this was the Midsummer Night's Dream. Just imagine when you're playing it in the middle of the summer, a warm night, maybe in the nature. Try and get the feeling of this piece and try and convey this while you're playing it and enjoy it. Have fun and good luck.