Interview, Alec Frank-Gemmill on Mozart's horn concertos

A long-awaited recording - Alec Frank-Gemmill at last commits Mozart's four horn concertos to disc! In addition to exploring Mozart's evolving relationship with his friend the horn player Joseph Leutgeb through the four well-known concertos, Alec (in collaboration with composer Stephen Roberts, also a horn player) also offers a suggestion for a middle movement for the brief No. 1 in D major, and some exciting realisations of sketches and fragments left unfinished by Mozart. 

I caught up with Alec to talk about this album, the way his previous recordings feed into his thinking about the concertos, Mozart's collaboration with Leutgeb, completions and reconstructions, and more.

Plenty of soloists dive into their instruments’ most iconic repertoire very early – perhaps too early in some cases! You certainly haven’t done that, with plenty of albums exploring other repertoire before turning your attention to Mozart. So – why did now feel like the right time?

My original plan was to record them on natural horn with a tiny orchestra directed by Alexander Janiczek from the violin. We know each other from Scottish Chamber Orchestra and I was really happy with our recording of Weber’s Concertino. Maybe one day we’ll do it that way! But various other recording projects came up in the meantime that seemed to better represent what I was doing musically at that moment. For example, I played four different varieites of “old horn” on my first album for BIS. Then came a collaboration with Nicholas McGegan and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra on fairly unknown baroque concertos. And more recently with Daniel Grimwood I explored transcriptions of Brahms chamber music. This last one was least understood and probably the most innovative thing I’ll ever do :) After all that it made sense to do this recording in a way that would combine my various musical interests. So here we have the same conductor and orchestra, a transcription and also, if not “old horn”, at least a lot of sounds and colours that I have learnt through my interest in period instruments.

How did you go about creating your own cadenzas – and why did you choose to write them out rather than extemporising?

Very few players really exemporise their cadenzas. In performance it is more authentic and exciting but this disc was not capturing live concerts. I want the audience to hear the best thing I can come up with! Having played these concertos fairly often, I had various cadenzas in my head. It’s probably true for most performers that we extemporise rather a lot and then choose the best bits. That’s how I came up with these anyway. There are various stunning recordings of these pieces with brilliant cadenzas and I was inspired by – but did not steal from – those. In fact for fun I’ve made small references to them but in a way that only an absolute horn geek could recognise! For example, I quote from Figaro because one recent album’s cadenza includes a theme from the Queen of the Night. Another colleague spends his cadenzas largely in the stratosphere, so I made sure to include one super F. There is also one cadenza where the orchestra horns butt in, etc. etc.

The first concerto is famously missing its slow movement – what’s the story behind the decision to use the slow movement of the violin concerto K211 to plug this gap?

Thanks to my project transcribing Brahms I have discovered that re-using material is quite controversial! But there were various reasons why I felt justified in doing so for this Mozart concerto. Above all, we can be certain that the slow movement does not exist – it is not waiting to be discovered in a library somewhere, Mozart just didn’t write it. In addition, this concerto is lovely but it was (in spite of the numbering) actually the last written for Josef Leutgeb and is rather easy. There is little with which to show off. On top of that, it being only two movements means Concerto No. 1 is also very short and one of the remaining three concertos is always on the billing instead. So I looked around for another Mozart concerto slow movement in a related key. G major is not a bad fit and there is something similar in texture and mood to the horn concertos in K 211. Admittedly it is longer and more taxing than the others. But that compensates nicely for the drawbacks in trying to perform the fragmentary version of the concerto as it has stood so far. The audience now get their money’s worth!

You mention Mozart adapting his later concertos to the abilities of the aging Leutgeb; are we aware of any other cases like this, of a composer (perhaps particularly writing for a wind instrument) going easy on an old friend?

There is actually something wonderfully youthful about the Mozart horn concertos. Even if the final one was written when horn player Josef Leutgeb was getting on in years. Perhaps that is because within them Mozart himself seems to be represented by the orchestra part, commenting on his long-suffering friend who is, of course, the solo line. Leutgeb was 24 years Mozart’s senior and a sort-of uncle to him. That relationship is part of what makes these pieces so special. You say “going easy” but while he reduced the difficulties of the horn part, it didn’t stop Mozart writing some quite outrageous things to Letugeb in the score!

For generations of horn players, Dennis Brain’s recordings from the 1950s have been the yardstick against which to measure themselves; were there any particular recordings of these concertos that you grew up with or that especially influenced you?

Growing up the only Mozart horn concertos I listened to were the Brain versions! As a student I also enjoyed the recordings by David Pyatt and Marie-Luise Neunecker. More recently I find that on the natural horn Roger Montgomery with the OAE is wonderful and, with Mozarteum Salzburg, Johannes Hinterholzer is also very much to my taste. But there are so many brilliant renditions. There is even a live performance from Abbado and Orchestra Mozart with Alessio Allegrini that is insanely good. You could say that these recordings all influenced me in my approach when making this disc. But those Brain recordings influenced me hugely in taking up the horn at all.