Barry Tuckwell

Professor Barry Emmanuel Tuckwell AC, OBE, is an Australian French horn player who has spent most of his professional life in the UK and the USA.

Early life and education

Professor Barry Tuckwell was born on 5 March 1931 in Melbourne, Australia. 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, he was introduced to the horn at age 13 and was playing professionally within six months. He studied at the Sydney Conservatorium under Mr Alan Mann, one of Australia’s most influential brass players. Mr Tuckwell has said “The horn chose me. Right from the beginning it was something I knew I could do.”

You can watch an interview with Barry Tuckwell about the early years of his musical life at The Music Page. (http://www.themusicpage.com/showVideos.php?v=417)

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, under Sir Eugene Goossens, where he remained for three and a half years before leaving for England. His first appointment was with the Hallé Orchestra under 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 Joseph Krips, Pierre Monteux, Istvan Kertesz and André Previn.

oloist

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 .

See an interview on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZQZ7CpXqAU YouTube]

Chamber Music

In 1962 he formed a trio with Brenton Langbein (violin) and Maureen Jones (piano) for a performance of the Don Banks trio 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 Mr 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

Mr. 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 Dvorak, 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.

Written works 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 and Don Banks his trio.

Writings

Professor 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 unfortunately 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. [ [http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/honours/honour_roll/search.cfm?aus_award_id=870234&search_type=quick&showInd=true It's an Honour] - Companion of the Order of Australia]

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 the 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 JC 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