("Symphony No. 2" by Gustav Mahler) - This instrument is an English horn. The English horn is the
brother of the oboe. It's a member of the double reed family. As you can see, there
is a reed right here. I made this with myself. It's better if you make the reed yourself, because you have more control of about what it sounds like. The English horn made out of cocobolo and it's made by a very well known maker in upstate New York and in their studio, they only have three people working and everything is made
by hand with hand tools. Unlike other companies that have automated machines, computers,
they drill everything, this instrument took over a year to make. The reeds are made out of a little bamboo that grows in the south of France. It actually grows everywhere, but most of the people buy it, it comes from the south of France,
because it is a tradition. And the English horn is
a long, conical tube. So at the very top here it's very tiny and also, it utilizes
this thing called a bocal. In other languages it's also equivalent to the name a crook. And being so small at the
top gives you a little bit of more control, it also gives
it a sort of trumpet-y sound. Especially in the oboe. And when you put your fingers
down what you're doing is you're actually making the tube longer. So for example, if I play here. (English horn trumpeting) As I played down on the
tube, it makes it longer. A long tube, for example, when I put all the fingers down, it gets very low. (English horn trumpeting) I love that it has a
beautiful, soulful sound. It has a very expressive character, much like a human voice. Because not a very high instrument and it's also not very low. So it's right around the
range of the human voice. Most people just always
love the English horn and there are so many great pieces, there's so much great
literature that has been written for the English horn. ("Symphony No. 9 in E minor,
Op. 95" by Antonin Dvorak) Dvorak's New World Symphony, basically the Holy Grail of every
English horn player. It's one of the better
known English horn solos. I don't think there's anybody
who doesn't know this tune. And it exemplifies how beautiful
the English horn can be. The English horn has an endearing quality. Which is, it's not perfect. You know, much like the human voice. Violin playing and oboe
playing can be very technical, very meticulous, and the English horn it's more like a viola, like a cello. Nobody expects it to be 100% in tune. It's just a very dolce sound,
it's a very warm sound, that has this characteristic of sort of a folk instrument, almost. Perhaps like the same
reason that Stravinsky used the bassoon and the English horn in the opening of the Sacre. Because he wanted it
to sound like something exotic that could not be, you
couldn't put your finger on. So perhaps, this is the
reason why Dvorak chose the English horn, because
it's a warm and old sound. That is imperfect, in
a way, but beautiful. ("Symphony No. 9 in E minor,
Op. 95" by Antonin Dvorak) When I was growing up my parents took me and my brother to
concerts, so we were used to going to symphony orchestra concerts and I developed an affinity
for the woodwind instruments. And I really like the
oboe, which is usually what you start studying. The English horn is
always sort of something that you study later,
much like if you study the violin, then you can
branch out into the viola. So I studied the oboe, I
started when I was 12 years old. And the circumstances made me practice. I wanted to play in the youth orchestra, I wanted to be the best in my school so my parents supported me, but they were not super, they didn't really force me to practice. And it was a matter of circumstances, one thing led to another,
I wasn't sort of railroaded into a career or pushed to
be the ultimate oboe soloist. I just, I really enjoyed what I was doing. I worked at it. I listened to a lot of recordings that my grandfather
had of classical music. And I listened to the radio. I love, for example, I listened to Bach's Brandenburg
Concerto every single day and think, how can someone
have come up with this? How can this beautiful
trio in the first movement? How can this be conceived? It's so perfect. I just, ponder on things
like that all day long when I was in seventh grade. I come from a school where it was a different generation, perhaps. We would go to the school and people would bring boomboxes and
we would be playing Strauss on the boombox and we would be comparing the Chicago Symphony versus
the Berlin Philharmoniker versus the Philadelphia Orchestra. And we were all in it. What happened as an
accident was that I ended up getting a job playing the English horn. I auditioned for an
orchestra in South Africa and they had two openings and one was for assistant principal
oboe and the other one was for the English horn. And I had just happened to had bought an instrument at the time,
just for no particular reason and I ended up getting the job. Some days I'm a better
English horn player, some days I'm a better oboe player, it depends on how much time
I spend on each instrument. But technically, if you
play the oboe very well, which is what I went to school
for, you will also become, you have the ability to become
a good English horn player. It's much like the
difference between going, I'd say, from a violin
to a viola or the cello. The spaces are smaller, tighter,
the sound is much higher on the oboe and on the violin. So when you move to the English horn, like you would move to the
cello, the vibrato is wider. The sound is warmer. There is little bit less
intensity in the sound. It's not as tight and it's not as rigid. It's much more relaxed sound. ("Symphony No. 2" by Gustav Mahler)