A Devil To Play

When HarperCollins bought the American rights, they politely but uncompromisingly advised me they weren’t too optimistic about the chances of a book with a double entendre in the title. We cast around for various alternatives until I realised that the answer was sitting there right in front of me. The epigraph of the UK edition is from “An Ill Wind”, Flanders and Swann’s delicious cabaret ditty, sung to the tune of the rondo of Mozart’s fourth horn concerto, K495. The climactic couplet goes like this:

To sound my horn, I had to develop my embouchure.
I found my horn was a bit of a devil to play

So with all due homage paid to Flanders and Swann for lifting a title for the second time from the very same line, I’ve called the book A Devil To Play. If some people mistake it for a crime novel, so be it.

Anyway, America plays a huge part in the book. I met many leading American horn players in New York and Los Angeles. I also spent an instrumentally taxing but idyllic week at horn camp in New Hampshire. Here’s an extract:

When I get out of the car at Camp Ogontz, deep in the heart of New Hampshire, it’s as if I’ve stepped back into the Alpine Sym­phony. The womanly contours of the local uplands, the Adiron­dacks, are hardly as epic as Bavaria, but there’s a lot of nature around—a silver lake, a babbling brook, an enveloping forest. And the sound of offstage horns is everywhere. The woods rever­berate to them, disembodied, calling and answering across the open glades of the camp. Overhead, a warm sun tilts toward the horizon. Unless I’m very much mistaken, I seem to have died and gone to horn heaven.

The only difference is that once you get into paradise, the auditioning is over.

On arrival in horn camp, the first thing I’m told I have to do is go see Kendall. “He just wants to get a feel for the level you’re at,” they tell me at reception. “He’s right up those steps. But before you do, you need to sign up for a chore.” There’s a sheet of A4 along the coun­ter. I look down the list. The choices are mostly in the kitchen or dining room: chopping/laying/washing/ drying for breakfast/lunch/dinner. There is also a “latrines” option. It occurs to me that if I sign up for toilet duty, then anything else that happens to me in horn camp will be a step up. Including performing Mozart 3. But there are limits to my masochism. I plump for “after dinner dishes” and head on up the steps to Kendall’s cabin.

Outside on the porch, smashed-up horns hang on the posts holding up the roof. One of them is actually squashed flat. The French horn is evidently not subject to unwavering reverence here at KBHC. I knock on the door. It is opened by a short, blinking man with a high forehead and glasses who looks like a cartoon version of himself.

“How’re you doing?” says Kendall Betts. “I’m real glad you made it.” Kendall, who was principal horn of the Minnesota Symphony for many years, is the only horn player I come across who some­how seems to have missed out on a career in stand-up. He sounds funny, he looks funny; later in the week he even plays funny. But at this particular juncture he is maybe a tad too serious for my liking.

“I just need to see what you can do so I know what sort of level you’re at.” After fifteen hours of travel I’m hot, sticky, and knack­ered, and can’t do a whole lot. I release the Lídl from its case after its maiden flight, spew out a scale, an arpeggio, and a few notes of the Romanze. It’s long past midnight my time, I haven’t warmed up, but still I am shocked at how bad the Lídl and I sound.

“Sorry, I don’t know what . . . ,” I stammer. “It’s been a long day.”

“What are you aiming to achieve in the week?” asks Kendall.

“I need performance practice,” I tell him. “I need to play in the concert at the end of the week.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he warns.

“Oh. Really?”

“If you crash and burn . . .”

I’ll be scarred for life? I’ve just spent somewhere north of fifteen hundred bucks to be here. I’d hate to see that go to waste. “I’m prepared to take the risk.”

“Well, if you’re not ready for prime time, you’re just not going to play. We had incidents in the past when people made fools of themselves. You don’t want that to happen, and we don’t want to listen to it. Bite off what you can chew.  It’s called a reality check.”

If I wasn’t scared before, I am now.

For any Americans visiting, you can order the book from Amazon.com.

The book had good review in The Economist, Wall Street Journal and San Francisco Chronicle.