Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 1 in D

  Just like Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 3 in Eb, this piece is a great place to start younger students, as well offering great training for advanced players. It's range is only from an E, first line treble clef, to an F#, fifth line treble clef. This means that their won't be disappoint of not getting the notes, or maybe worse, cheating and squeaking out notes above the staff.
  In my opinion, this piece does present more of a challenge than the Mozart's Third, because this one is in D. This means that whoever is playing it is going to get a lot a better at that transposition and is going to be working with quite a few cross-fingerings. That's because your dealing with G#, A, C#, and D. It's all good training that will translate over to any other piece you'll see out there.

  I highly recommend working this piece out because I've always been much stronger with reading Eb than D. I think that's mainly because we see the Mozart's other horn concertos so much more often. This one will give you good real-world training as there are quite a few orchestral excepts in D, not to mention the Haydn horn concertos -which are also requested quite often.


  Now to take a quick look at the movements...

1. There are only two movements in this piece, the first is an Allegro. The sound of this movement really reminds me of the first movement of Mozart's Third. It's round, flowing, and light throughout the entire movement. A lot of the runs include cross-fingers. I honestly bet this piece would be twice as easy for a natural horn player, which might make more advanced players take a look at this piece being a starting point for their work on hand horn.
2. The second movement is also marked Rondo, but it's in 6/8 and much more "stately." It reminds me of a cliche Classical waltz where all the woman have their big, poofy dresses and all the men are wearing powdered wigs. Even then, Mozart does put in some darker phrases that really give the movement a wide pallet of colors and adds depth to the work.

  Back when I was listening to a bunch of recordings to expand my vocabulary on this piece, one that really stood one to me was Michael Thompson's. Enjoy!