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| '''Barry Emmanuel Tuckwell''' ], ] (b. 5 March 1931), is an ]n ] player who has spent most of his professional life in the ] and the ]. | '''Barry Emmanuel Tuckwell''' ], ] (b. 5 March 1931), is an ]n ] player who has spent most of his professional life in the ] and the ]. | ||
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Barry Emmanuel Tuckwell AC, OBE (b. 5 March 1931), is an Australian French horn player who has spent most of his professional life in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Early life and education
Barry Tuckwell was born on 5 March 1931 in Melbourne. He comes from a distinguished musical family, all of whose members were endowed with perfect pitch, and he was able to read music before he could read words. After studying the piano, organ, and violin as a chorister at St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, he was introduced to the horn at age 13 and was playing professionally within six months. He studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under Alan Mann, one of Australia's most influential brass players. Tuckwell has said, "The horn chose me. Right from the beginning, it was something I knew I could do."
Tuckwell relates an anecdote regarding his choice of instrument: sitting in a cafe one day with his sister Patricia, Charles Mackerras and a French horn player from the local symphony, Patricia speculated on what Tuckwell's future in music might be. The horn player suggested, "Why not try the horn?" Tuckwell did so and within two years was playing in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. With characteristic humour, when recounting this at the British Horn Society's festival in 2005, he turned to the audience and said, "One note a time, piece of cake!" The horn is reckoned to be one of the most difficult instruments in the orchestra to master.
Performing career
Orchestral
At 15, he was appointed by Joseph Post as third horn with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. A year later, he joined the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Eugene Goossens, where he remained for three and a half years before leaving for England. His first appointment was with the Hallé Orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli. After two years, he went to the Scottish National Orchestra under Karl Rankl and a year later to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Charles Groves. In 1955, he was appointed first horn with the London Symphony Orchestra.
During his 13 years with the LSO, which is a co-operative orchestra run entirely by the players, he was elected to the Board of Directors and was Chairman of the Board for six years. The chief conductors during this time were Josef Krips, Pierre Monteux, István Kertész and André Previn.
Soloist
He resigned from the orchestra in 1968 to pursue a career as a soloist and conductor. For the next thirty years, he carved out a career exclusively as a soloist — the only horn virtuoso to have done so, rather than combining occasional concert performances with an orchestral position or a teaching post — before giving his last concert with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 1997.
Over several thousand concerts and many many airmiles, critics continually praised the "bel canto elegance" of his playing, the "silken sheen of his tone", the "incredible musicality of his phrasing" , and "the uncanny ease with which he tosses off roulades, trills, gossamer scales, and impossibly high notes".
He is the most recorded of all horn players, having made over 50 recordings. He has received three Grammy Award nominations.
Chamber music
In 1962 he formed a trio with Brenton Langbein (violin) and Maureen Jones (piano) for a performance of the Horn Trio by Don Banks which was commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival. The trio played together for many years, touring in Europe, Asia and Australia until the untimely death of Brenton Langbein. They recorded the Banks Trio, the Brahms Trio, and Quatre Petites Pièces by Charles Koechlin for Tudor records.
He formed a wind quintet in 1968, which also toured internationally.
Conducting
Tuckwell is also well known as a conductor, appearing with leading orchestras in Europe and the United States. For four seasons he was Chief Conductor of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and in 1982 founded the Maryland Symphony Orchestra. He enjoyed a long association with the Northern Sinfonia and was appointed their Guest Conductor following an acclaimed fourteen-concert tour of North America.
Recordings as a conductor include three CDs with the London Symphony Orchestra of music by Dvořák, Elgar and Wagner. More recently, he conducted the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in an ABC Classics recording of the Mozart horn concertos with soloist Lin Jiang and The Queensland Orchestra for Melba Recordings of horn concertos with Ben Jacks.
World written for Tuckwell
Many composers have written works for Barry Tuckwell. Oliver Knussen, Don Banks, Gunther Schuller, Robin Holloway, and Thea Musgrave have written concertos; Richard Rodney Bennett wrote "Acteon" for horn and large orchestra; Don Banks, his trio.
Writings
Barry Tuckwell has written three important books on the horn and horn playing. For the Yehudi Menuhin Music Guides, he wrote the book on the horn. His definitive manual Playing the Horn was published by Oxford University Press (now out of print) as was Fifty First Exercises.
Teaching
Tuckwell is famous for his master classes. He has been Artist-in-Residence at Dartmouth College and Pomona College in the USA, and he was Professor of Horn at the Royal Academy of Music in London for ten years. He currently holds the position of Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and has for several years hosted the annual Barry Tuckwell Institute in the USA.
Awards and honors
Barry Tuckwell was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1965 and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1992.
Among the many other awards he has received are an Honorary Doctor of Music from the University of Sydney, Fellow of the Royal College of Music, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America, the Andrew White Medal from Loyola College, the Harriet Cohen Memorial Award, the J. C. Williamson Award, and most recently, the Sir Bernard Heinze Award for outstanding contribution to music in Australia.
He is also an Honorary member of both the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
He was the first president of the International Horn Society and is currently honorary president of the British Horn Society and the patron of the Melbourne International Festival of Brass.
References
- Profile, Minnesota Public Radio.
- The Horn Player, Summer 2005
- It's an Honour: AC