Bach

asin: B0017M8YJY binding: Audio CD list price: $18.98 USD amazon price: $13.99 USD

These Suites, written for a string instrument, are extremely challenging masterpieces that only an excellent artist with the highest level of virtuosity and musicianship can pull off. Principal Horn of the Buffalo Philharmonic Jacek Muzyk succeeds--and makes the French horn sound as sweet, colorful, and beautiful as a cello on this visceral recording.

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)