Under The Influence

Much the most influential figure in my horn story is the great British horn player, Dave Lee. The photograph by Dillon Bryden pretty much sums up the tone of my lessons with him. Here is an extract from chapter three, “Who Is This Bethover?”. I’ve just told Dave of my plan to play a Mozart concerto at the British Horn Society:

“Oh.”

Dave Lee’s response is noncommittal.

“What do you think they’ll say?” I ask him. “Any chance they might say yes?”

The thing about Dave is that he has two stock reactions to almost any situation. Like almost all horn players, he finds life funny. But as a pureblood Yorkshireman he also finds a certain amount to grumble about. The grumbling is mostly to do with working conditions, violations of Musicians Union rules and regs, etc. Occasionally it’s provoked by the underhand politick­ing of his less-than-favourite colleagues. Talk to Dave, and you’d come away with the impression that the horn world is heaving with plotters, backstabbers, agitators, insurrectionaries, Machia­vellians, Masonic intriguers, Decembrists, insurgents, heretics, arsonists, sans-culottes, frame breakers, defenestrators, and, of course, egomaniacs. And other such. Show Dave a horn quartet, and he’ll show you a Gang of Four. (Although some of his best friends are horn players too. Through him I meet a sizable number of like-minded horn players, mostly in pubs, of whom he thinks the world.)

So this idea of mine seems to confuse him. It doesn’t fall within the compass of his two default settings. It’s not hilarious, and it’s not a scandal. Or maybe it’s both. I watch him computing rapidly. This bloke, he’s thinking, wants to stand up in front of an entire audience of horn players, who will have come along expecting to listen to the top professionals, and invite the ultimate humiliation. The French horn takes no prisoners, he’s thinking. It is uniquely treacherous. Mistakes on it are so much easier to perpetrate than on other instruments, and so much more audible. When you play the horn in public, especially on your own, you either fly, or you plummet into an all-consuming vortex of flames. You can see all these thoughts, and more, right there on Dave’s bearded face.

But all I can hear is the sound of Dave not saying anything. Until he does say something. He tries to sound casual, but there’s no mistaking the urgency of the subtext.

“We’d better get together and have a blow.”

Dave Lee’s CD Under The Influence is chock-full of horn-playing you won’t hear anywhere else. You can listen to samples and buy it at either the record company website here or on Amazon here.