To a sympathetic audience, a French-horn player is often the object of grave solicitude. Even the best of them sometimes lip up confidently for a Wagnerian horn call only to burble or clonk out a sound like a moose cough. One man who rarely burbles or clonks on the most unpredictable of orchestra instruments is England's Dennis Brain. At 32, Brain (no kin to Winston Churchill's physician —see FOREIGN NEWS) is Britain's best horn player, and last week he showed off his skill in one of the rare pieces written for horn.
The occasion was a music festival run by Composer Benjamin Britten in Aide-burgh, 85 miles northeast of London. With Composer Britten conducting, Brain performed Haydn's First Concerto for Horn. The piece itself is not one of Haydn's most memorable,* but Brain's music poured out such glistening darts and gentle flutters of sound that the concerto seemed momentous. He conquered the opening and closing fast movements with sparkling virtuosity, and gave the slow middle movement a beautiful, butter-smooth tone. At the end, he took five bows before a roaring audience, then sat down to repeat the final movement.
"He's tempting fate," warned one nervous woman from her seat. But Brain's encore was as rousing as before. "It's miraculous," said another listener. "You're always afraid he may not be perfect this time, and he always is."
Third Generation. The man who performs those miracles protests that he is not at all perfect, but the fact is that he is a phenomenal musician who has been playing ever since three, when he razzed out his first toot on the horn. At twelve, he began to study seriously, kept at his work through World War II (Royal Air Force Band), and is now first horn with London's Philharmonia Orchestra.
His biggest impetus came from being born into a family of musicians. Grandfather A. E. Brain was a horn man; so were his three sons: Alfred, who played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Edward, who finally gave up and joined the London police force; and Aubrey,** England's best before the war, who played with the BBC Symphony. Aubrey's sons are Horn Player Dennis and Leonard, an oboist.
A Spitting Sound. Dennis, a pink, cherub-faced man, takes his music seriously. His lips are insured for £10,000, and he avoids all sports except table tennis—a ping-pong ball could hardly damage him, he feels. As for his horn-playing technique, modest Dennis has a simple explanation:
"You smile, or at least you stretch your mouth and put it up at the corners, and then you [here he makes a little spitting noise that sounds like "thhsp!"] flick a hair off with the end of your tongue, a tiny hair, and that's all there is to it."
* In 1762, Composer Haydn, overworked and burdened with family troubles, got the notations on the last page of his score all mixed up. Later, he corrected his mistakes, wrote at the bottom of the score: "1m Schlaf geschrieben" (Written in my sleep).** Aubrey, who had outstanding breath control, once bet Violinist Harry Blech that he could sustain a note longer than Blech. Violinist Blech, drawing out one stroke as long as possible, lost to Aubrey, who held one note for 75 seconds.