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DENNIS BRAIN A Life in Music

DENNIS BRAIN A Life in Music

 
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Printed Edition
Composer:Gamble, Stephen
Instrumentation:Book
Publisher Ref:9781574413076

Price: £29.95
Qty
Arranger:Lynch, William
Publisher:North Texas University Press
Year of Issue:2011
ISMN:none specified
ISBN:9781574413076
The British horn player Dennis Brain (1921-1957) is commonly described by such statements as “the greatest horn player of the 20th Century,” “a genius,” and “a legend.” He was both a prodigy and populariser, famously performing a concerto on a garden hose in perfect pitch. On his usual concert instrument his tone was of unsurpassed beauty and clarity, complemented by a flawless technique. The recordings he made with Herbert von Karajan of Mozart’s horn concerti are considered the definitive interpretations.
After joining the National Symphony Orchestra of London, Brain enlisted in the English armed forces during World War II for seven years, joining the National Symphony Orchestra in wartime in 1942. After the war he filled the principal horn positions in both the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras. He later formed his own wind quintet and began conducting. Composers including Benjamin Britten and Paul Hindemith lined up to write music for him. Even fifty years after his tragic death at the age of 36 in an auto accident in 1957, Peter Maxwell Davies was commissioned to write a piece in his honour.
Stephen Gamble and William Lynch have conducted numerous interviews with family, friends, and colleagues and uncovered information in the BBC archives and other lesser known sources about recordings that were previously unknown. This volume describes Brain’s life and analyses in depth his musical career. Its appendices of information on performances will appeal to music historians, and its details on Brain’s instruments and equipment will be useful to horn players.
“A pleasure to read: serious but personable, unaffected, unpretentious–conversational in tone. The character of the prose can be said to reflect the character of the book’s subject. Eminently satisfying.”—Robert Marshall, author of Dennis Brain on Record
“Since a great deal of new material has been found by the authors, it is exciting for horn players to anticipate the publication of this book.”—William Scharnberg, Regents Professor of Horn, University of North Texas

About Authors:
STEPHEN GAMBLE and WILLIAM LYNCH are both independent researchers who have been fascinated with Dennis Brain for decades. Lynch, an amateur horn player himself, is a semi-retired aerospace corporation executive with four U.S. patents to his name. Stephen Gamble is a British artist who started playing the horn in 2003.

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