Excerpt BooksGet the parts! But get a couple of the best excerpt books too. John EricsonIf you are really serious about learning orchestral works you must have copies of the original orchestral parts, not an excerpt book. I spent years as a student Xeroxing parts to obtain a complete collection, a most necessary item for anyone really serious about auditions. For those not wanting to spend years collecting parts in this manner I recommend very highly The Orchestral Audition Repertoire For Horn: Comprehensive and Unabridged published by Thompson Edition. Another great alternate are the PDF parts on CD, The Orchestra Musician's CD-ROM Library, which are even more complete. For the initial learning of excerpts, however, excerpt books can certainly be useful. I recommend to my students the Anthology of French Horn Music by Moore and Ettore, published by Mel Bay. This collection is to be especially noted for not only presenting well thought out and laid out excerpts, but for also giving good solid suggested metronome markings for every work, information that is alone well worth the cost of the volume. The only major shortcoming is that this publication has no Strauss, Mahler, or Wagner excerpts. There are several options on Wagner, none great in my opinion. For Strauss and Mahler I suggest the purchase of the Complete First Horn Parts to Richard Strauss' Tone Poems and Complete First Horn Parts to Mahler's Symphonies 1-6, both published by Wind Music. Copyright John Ericson. All rights reserved. |