Brass players love Mahler so much

        In 2009, Christoph Eschenbach, conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra said that “Mahler is certainly the greatest symphonist ever.” I totally agree with this statement, and I’m sure most of the brass players would agree as well. The biggest reason why we love Mahler’s symphonies is that the brass section always takes up a huge role in his symphonies. For example, Shostakovich’s symphonies, Stravinsky’s Firebirds, etc. Some of the most difficult and remarkable excerpts are taken from those repertoires.

In the Classical period, brass instruments weren’t as important as nowadays in an orchestra. Brass players only needed to play simple rhythms and pitches as the instruments weren’t developed well yet. As the brass valves were invented later, the limitation of brass has reduced. So Mahler could write more challenging and gorgeous passages for brass. Us, the brass players always get excited for Mahler’s symphonies because we have more parts to play in our section (there are 10 horns in Mahler 1) and do not need to wait so long for our parts while playing.

As a horn player, I love Mahler so much because he wrote so many beautiful and grand horn solo passages, and the most impressive part is the horn solo passage from Mahler 5’s 3rd movement and gorgeous horn section solo in Mahler 1’s 4th movement. The grand horn sound stands out from the whole orchestra, and the audience always yells bravo to the horn players after the symphony finishes, and we simply develop a sense of pride from that. It would be great if I have the chance to play all Mahler’s symphonies in the future.

This is the horn solo passage from Mahler 5's 3rd mvt played by principal horn of Berlin Phil, Stefan Dohr.