11/5/2019 Euphonium.

net

Think like a musician, not like a brass player

Thinking musically is one of the most important things to learn in the process of creating of a
vocal style of brass playing. Develop the ear and a feeling for melodic line so that good musical
experiences in the memory trigger immediate solutions to musical problems.

- Steven Mead, December, 2001

Article for Clarino Magazine

Preparing a Major Solo Piece for Euphonium

"Euphonium Concerto" - Joseph Horovitz

Preparing a major solo piece takes a lot time, whoever the soloist is. Playing the notes may take a
shorter time but a piece of stature and importance needs more of your time than the time it takes

to get through the notes. There are not really enough quality solo pieces for euphonium in
existence yet but the situation has improved rapidly over the past 15 years or so to the extent a
euphonium soloist has up to 50 extended high quality pieces to select from, from sonatas to
rhapsodies, fantasies, fantasias, concertinos, concerti and so on. These major works range from 8
minutes to 25 minutes duration and have various accompaniments from piano to brass and wind
band, string and full symphony orchestra. Some have extreme technical difficulty, so much so that
there are maybe less than ten players in the world you could do a good job with it. Therefore the
purpose of this article is not to confuse or impress with seemingly "mythical" ways to play one of
these incredibly hard works with the 5 or 6 hours practice per day to learn, and memorize such
works, but rather to take what is perhaps the best known and most often played concertos for
euphonium and show a variety of methods to achieve musical success.

The work I have selected is the Euphonium Concerto by Joseph Horovitz, composed in 1972 as a
commission from the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain. Trevor Groom gave the
first performance on October 14th of that year with the famous GUS Footwear Band conductor
Stanley Boddington, at London's Royal Albert Hall. The work was subsequently recorded shortly
after by the same soloist and band with the composer conducting.

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