Notes and Editorial Reviews
FAUST
Horn Call for Horn and Electronic Media. Concerto for Horn and Winds.
1
Call and Response for Solo Horn. English Folk Songs.
1
Rondo.
1
Declamation: Fantasy Variations.
2
Meditation.
3
Celebration.
3
Fantasy on “Von Himmel Hoch.”
3
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class="ARIAL12bi">Sesquicentennial Prelude.
3
Festive Processional
3
•
Andrew Pelletier (hn); Jason Aquila (pn);
1
Hyung Ja Kim (hpd);
2
Brian Rotz (org)
3
•
MSR 1168 (69:26)
Randall E. Faust is a performing hornist and a professor of music at Western Illinois University. He has also served, for more than two decades, on the summer horn faculty at Interlochen. To get some idea of the stylistic range of his work as a composer, just play the first two works on this release back to back.
Horn Call for Horn and Electronic Media
, composed in 1976, puts him in the camp of all
musique concrète
practitioners, past and present. The liner notes state that the piece “employs both the oldest and the newest methods of modifying the tone of the horn: hand stopping and electronic processing.” Indeed, the opening statement is built around the perfect fifth, one of the most natural intervals of the natural horn. What follows is a cleverly and resourcefully constructed four-minute musical odyssey that conveys both the horn’s range of expression and its downright majesty. I now use this all-too-brief track as a demonstration piece for my more conservative musical friends who are convinced that electronic manipulations of any kind are inimical to real music-making. By contrast,
Concerto for Horn and Wind Ensemble
, composed in 1987 and given here, alas, with a piano realization of the wind score, obliquely recalls, in its Classical clarity though not its harmonies, Mozart’s four horn concertoes. Indeed, its finale proves to be a clever paraphrase of the last movement of Mozart’s Fourth Horn Concerto, K 495. In the end, Faust’s concerto proves to be an eloquent homage to the Austrian master.
And now to skip around a bit. Faust’s virtuosic 1997
Call and Response for Solo Horn
is yet another foray into the horn’s expressive possibilities. It starts as a recitative which morphs into a moving statement of
Amazing Grace.
The three
English Folk Songs
for horn and piano of 2006 never stray far from their source tunes, but are disarmingly effective in these straightforward and, at one point, unexpectedly illuminating, settings. My late wife, an accomplished folk singer with an appreciation of so-called Classical Music, imbued me with the notion that all art music springs from folk music. It is
the
source which should be given utmost respect—a fact not lost on Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Bela Bartók, Zoltan Kodály, or Randall E. Faust. The second song in this suite is variously known as
The Water Is Wide
and
O Waly, Waly
. Faust, by manipulating a few of its intervals, once again morphs it into
Amazing Grace
, showing something that is profoundly universal about all folk music.
The pieces for horn and organ are all based on hymnody. In them Faust walks the fine line of being simplistically direct and harmonically sophisticated. His
Fantasy on “Von Himmel Hoch”
of 2001 is an inverted set of variations on a theme. The first is the most weirdly far-removed of the lot, and, little by little, he works his way back to a glorious statement of their source. Stravinsky, who produced his own variations on this theme, would have smiled wholeheartedly. The
Sesquicentennial Prelude
of 2004 is based on the 19th-century hymn tune by R. Kelso Carter,
Standing on the Promises of God
. To these ears, it sounds like the
Battle Hymn of the Republic
. I don’t know which came first, but, I trust that the Civil War theme was probably spun from it.
Faust’s music, as presented here, searches into the unfathomable, and unable to be articulated in words, realms of what moves us. In this release he has struck, as far as I am concerned, a proverbial chord, and the result is both joyful and celebratory.
Hornist Andrew Pelletier is phenomenal. He is able to float the most beautifully
soto voce
and tonally variegated of legatos (he’s got to have one fine pair of lungs), and, at the other extreme, is able to make his instrument bark like an untamed dog in the best Handel and Haydn tradition. Most to the point, he is undeniably in tune with what he plays, and Faust provides him a fine showcase. As for the sound on this release, it is in all ways effective. In the horn and organ pieces, the organ pedals actually pushed my 800-horsepower sound system almost to its limits, but did so cleanly and with no distortion whatsoever.
FANFARE: William Zagorski
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Works on This Recording
1.
Horn Call for Horn and Electronic Media by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1976; USA
2.
Concerto for Horn and Wind Ensemble by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn),
Jason Aquila (Piano)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1987; USA
3.
Call and Response for Solo Horn by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1997
4.
English Folk Songs by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn),
Jason Aquila (Piano)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 2006
5.
Rondo for Horn and Piano by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn),
Jason Aquila (Piano)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1997
6.
Declamation "Fantasy Variations" by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn),
Hyung Ja Kim (Harpsichord)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 2004
7.
Meditation for Horn and Organ by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn),
Brian Rotz (Organ)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1983
8.
Fantasy on "Von Himmel Hoch" by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn),
Brian Rotz (Organ)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 2001
9.
Sesquicentennial Prelude by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn),
Brian Rotz (Organ)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 2004
10.
Festive Processional by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn),
Brian Rotz (Organ)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 2001-2002
11.
Celebration for Horn and Organ by Randall Faust
Performer:
Andrew Pelletier (French Horn),
Brian Rotz (Organ)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1974
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