Media
Audio
Mozart K495, mvt 1 – recorded for horn and piano with original cadenza, accompanied by Jonathan Musgrave.
Mozart K412, mvt 1 – a live recording on natural horn, from a concert dedicated to the memory of horn player Ed Mills with The Amadé Players.
Discography
National Youth Jazz Orchestra: A Christmas Carol
National Youth Jazz Orchestra: NYJO Fifty
National Youth Jazz Orchestra: The Change
Video
Jacques-Francois Gallay was one of the most important musicians of his day in France, mentioned in the same breath as Paganini and admired by composers such as Berlioz. A professor at the Paris Conservatoire, he wrote many volumes of solo pieces to encourage the good treatment of melody and line, including a set of Douze Grands Caprices. Although unaccompanied, each Caprice is harmonically suggestive enough to conjure up an accompaniment in the ears of the listener; Gallay was heavily influenced by opera, frequently writing fantasies on operatic tunes he knew from his job as principal horn at the Théâtre Italien. This is his 9th Caprice.
Until leaving in 2016, I performed regularly with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, holding the unusual role of horn player in a big band; this is one number we performed at the BBC Proms in 2012.
Words
Anna in conversation with LondonJazz, 8/3/2014
Images
By Eleonora Haller Zwierzchowska:
By Timothy Ellis:
By Zhanna Bobrakova:
