Most people probably do not know very much about the heckelphone, if they are aware of it at all. As one might expect, there is a Wikipedia entry for it; but I have some doubts about the photograph, which is not quite consistent with what I have actually seen. The only reason have much awareness of the instrument was because I had a book of photographs of instruments of the orchestra when I was a kid, and I spent so much time with it that my memories of many of those photographs are pretty salient. However, my heckelphone memories were reinforced this season by having two occasions when I was consciously aware of the beast in action.
The first one occurred near the end of last year. Carl St. Clair visited the San Francisco Conservatory and gave a master class in which he conducted the Conservatory Orchestra in selected movements from Gustav Holst's "Planets" suite. I was able to grab a good seat in the choir loft right above the percussion (ideal for this composition); and there, at the rear of the wind section, I saw my first heckelphone. Wikipedia cautions us not to confuse it with the bass oboe. However, its appearance is more like an English horn on growth hormones that is now ready to play center position for the NBA. I am not sure that it has many solo opportunities, but it definitely expands the spectral qualities of the wind section, lowering the tessitura of the English horn without in any way resembling the sound of a bassoon. I also have to say that St. Clair provided an ideal introduction to this sound. Holst had a hand in it, of course; but, as a conductor, St. Clair had uncanny precision in understanding how every individual voice in Holst's score contributed to the overall sound. I never saw a conductor work like him to fine-tune sound quality; and I have not heard one since him!
Had I not had this experience with St. Clair rehearsing Holst, I might not have paid attention to the fact that there was a heckelphone in the San Francisco Opera orchestra pit. It is probably not unfair to say that orchestration is the strongest suit in Richard Strauss' deck of cards. With all his tone poem experience he could achieve all sorts of depictions through music; but, a bit like Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier, he was not particularly good at recognizing when he was just being ridiculous. Nevertheless, the orchestral colors he invokes in Rosenkavalier show a sensitivity that provides the perfect complement to Hofmannsthal's sensitivity to human psychology. Once again the heckelphone is there to serve better the delivery of an overall effect. In fact the performer was doubling on bass clarinet, making this the first time I saw someone alternating between single-reed and double-reed instruments. (Yes, I suppose Roland Kirk did that; but I never saw him in a "physical" performance.)
Taken together, these examples raise an interesting point about experiencing music. There is no doubt that the Holst suite was instrumental (pun sort of intended) in launching the CD industry It became the great Poster Child for putting out sounds far beyond the capacity of the vinyl medium. Nevertheless, where both Strauss and Holst are involved, there has yet to be a recording that can match the sound of actually being there with the orchestra. There are just too many instruments contributing to that overall color, making anything coming out of even the best loudspeakers a pale abstraction of the composer's conception. This does not mean that I am removing my RIP of the earlier von Karajan Rosenkavalier recording from my hard drive, but it does mean that I shall continue to show up at physical performances of this opera whenever I have the opportunity!
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