Willisabethan Sarahnade for 2 Horns Klaus Wallendorf / Arr. Karl Aumair

für 2 Hörner
WILLISabethan SARAHnade Sarah Willis and I have spent the past couple of decades on a deliciously wild journey together, both musically and geographically. The pieces in this little collection of horn duets have been inspired by the odyssey I embarked upon with this wondrous woman, marking particular high points of our mutual quest for instrumental transcendence. Only high points, you ask? Of course. How could there possibly have been anything else?? The P Duet, for example, came into being in the village of Cumnor near Oxford, of all places, and is, well, a homage, I suppose, to Sarah's now obsolete habit endearing as it was (to me) (since no one else ever seemed to hear it) of constantly starting her otherwise magical horn tones with a little explosive attack. Gozo fan tutte and Xlendrian are dedicated to Gozo, an island neighbouring Malta, to a particularly secluded bay of which we subjected their world premieres & to an unusually attentive audience consisting entirely of invertebrates. The letter "x" is, in those parts, pronounced "sch", and the piece lasts exactly as long as one requires to find out what Schlendrian's means & Agia Galini is an enchanting little village in the south of Crete where I filled the occasional pauses for breath between writing postcards by penning this duet. In case of doubt: this work exists purely for our mutual pleasure and makes no demands of consideration on the musicological community whatsoever. While lazing around on the Mediterranean island My Yorker I composed this little ditty in order to escape the inexorable grasp of Otto Nicolai's horn duets, which we have, in the cause of steeling our embouchures, spent the last 27 years (as of 2017) honking for everybody and nobody all around the globe. We can get round these works like no one else and so it should remain. HA! Klaus Wallendorf adapted to the first Prelude of J.S. Bach