AHQ

Join the American Horn Quartet in Daytona Beach, Florida, August 5-11, 2007 for a week of horn study and fun in the sun. Participants will attend master classes, group lessons, ensembles and perform in concerts with the AHQ at Daytona Beach Community College and around the beautiful beachside town. The workshop is open to all hornists; ensembles will be formed based on experience and individual abilities to insure participants the highest level of attention. The course is $750 (including all instruction, room and meals) for the week. Instructors will be David Johnson, Charles Putnam, Kerry Turner and Geoffrey Winter; other instructors added if workshop numbers demand it. Please visit the American Horn Quartet website, www.hornquartet.com, or email Heather Johnson at hephorn@yahoo.com for more information.

The American Horn Quartet has produced an awsome recording of Schumann's Konzertstück for 4 Horns and Orchestra. I've owned many recordings of this piece, each one cherished on the merit of its particular strengths. This recording shows what the piece sounds like with four soloists, opposed to the more typical situation where the orchestra horn section is being featured. It brings a new level of virtuosity to the piece, and more clarity and precision than any other recording I know. It shows that the AHQ has performed this piece dozens of times around the world.

Also on the recording are the George Philipp Telemann Overture for 4 Horns and Haydn's Symphony 31 "mit dem Hornsignal".

April 17, 2005, Überlingen, Germany.

The premiere could hardly have been more perfect. A granidose spectrum of music interpreted by an ensemble with world-wide reputation to a full house. What more could a concert organizer want? Music director Ralf Ochs and event manager Reinhard A. Weigelt could have only hoped for so much in their wildest dreams. More than 300 filled the Kapuziner church for the concert of the American Horn Quartet. The music loving audience was glowingly enthusiastic about the four prominent hornists who harmonized so impressively, and said goodbye to them with standing ovations. Not before they had applauded them into playing a special encore, though.

That the musicians let themselves be asked twice [to play the encore] could just possibly have been because they wanted to give their tired lips and lungs a short respite. After all, they'd already spent the entire day conducting a workshop at the music school working with aspiring hornists from Überlingen and all of Baden-Württemberg. In any case, when the sublime Air from Johann Sebastian Bach's orchestral Suite No. 3 filled the rooms of the Kapuziner church, it was the cherry on top of the cake for the diverse and challenging program. Had anyone previously had low expectations about the music of a horn quartet, they returned home richer for the overwhelming experience.

Link (in German)