Concert Report 2

Yesterday afternoon I attended a senior recital in Ford Hall, in the music school. The recital was for Robert Oldroyd, a horn player. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this recital. One main reason I enjoyed it was because of how unique it was - I wasn't really expecting the different types of instrumentation that accompanied the horn. 

For example, the opening piece was a duet - one horn and a piano. I guess I don't listen to classical music very much, but I can honestly say I've never heard a piece with only those two instruments. Besides the fact that I was surprised by the instrumentation, I felt as shit piece was similar to music we have studied from the enlightenment. I say this mainly because of the phrasing and melodies. Everything seemed fairly predictable, as phrases always seemed to 'come back home' (end in a PAC). The melody was a bit more repetitive than I'm used to hearing in that style of music, but then again, I don't listen to the genre much. That all being said, I definitely enjoyed the piece, as both musicians did a great job at conveying a joyous, almost dream-like mood. 

The next piece, Room-Music Tit-Bits, was quite different. Rather than just having two instruments (piano and horn), there were five on stage. These instruments consisted of the horn (of course), an oboe, a clarinet, a bassoon, and a flute. From a phrasing standpoint, I thought it was similar to the first piece in the fact that it was fairly predictable. However, unlike the first piece, instrumentation was obviously completely different. The fact that it was now an all-woodwind ensemble was definitely less foreign to me, as that's something I've heard many times.

One other song that stuck out to me was "Elegie". In this piece, the pianist came back on stage. However, it wasn't this weird horn/piano combination that threw me off this time. Even with the same instrumentation of the first piece, it sounded COMPLETELY different. I couldn't follow the phrase pattern at all. The music seemed disjointed, with random bursts of loudness and purposeful (hopefully) screeches from the horn. It wasn't just the horn doing these outbursts either, as for the most part the song seemed to be a call and response between the two instruments. Overall, while wouldn't particularly have enjoyed listening to this for leisure, it was interesting. What came to my mind immediately was the Beethoven pieces we talked about, with random notes that would startle his audiences.

In the end, I greatly enjoyed the recital. It was different that anything I've ever really heard before.