Trip the Light Fantastic
Horn virtuoso Owen Farr commissioned a new concert item for tenor horn from composer Dan Price in 2009, Trip the Light Fantastic was the resulting work.
The piece is music absolute, with no particular aim to tell a story or impose an image or idea on the listener. Anyone who knows Owen will know that he has an infectious and engaging presence and a lively sense of humour. His technical and musical ability is universally renowned, as is his enthusiasm and passion for music. The composer has attempted to create a musical caricature of some of these personal qualities and has borrowed the dancing term ‘to trip the light fantastic’, “to dance nimbly or lightly, or to move in a pattern to musical accompaniment” as a fitting title to encompass the virtuosic yet jovial nature of the piece.
The work is in a traditional ternary structure (fast –slow –fast) and it begins with raucous lip glissandi from the soloist as an introduction to the main theme. The outer sections of the piece take the form of a jig, and the short melodic idea heard at the start of this section provides all the material for the remainder of the work. The accompaniment is sparsely scored to enable the virtuosic nature of the solo lines to come across clearly. The central slow section of the piece is a contrast in tempo and style and gives the soloist an opportunity to demonstrate the warm, sonorous sound of the tenor horn. This is followed by a recapitulation of the dance, and with a sizeable cadenza for the soloist to really ‘strut his stuff’, the piece bounds to a rousing close.