The Arutunian Horn Concerto: a review

As many of you know, I played the Arutunian concerto for our studio recital. I picked the piece because I wanted something off the beaten path, and its scales and weird passages interested me.

The piece is in two movements - one insanely slow (quarter = 40) and one insanely fast (5/8 measure = 70). The first mvt. is technically easy. The only hurdle is that the horn is on your face a lot, and the slow tempo increases that. But even for someone like me with endurance problems, it was simply a matter of forcing myself to play through everything at least twice a day during the time leading up to the recital.

The 2nd movement is a beast. Given that the first couple pages really only contain scalar material, they should fly by pretty quick, as long as you can get into a grove with the 5/8 time (but that's the real trick isn't it?). The scales take a lot from Russian and eastern European folk music, and use a lot of augmented 2nds. The last page contains a monster of an arpeggio lick, which can only be conquered through repetition.

But at the end, the solo wasn't very intimidating once I got it in my head and under my fingers. Just a matter of repetition. I would recommend it!