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Center Stage with Philip Myers

An interview with New York Philharmonic Principal horn, Philip Myers.

"Why did you choose to switch to the Schmid horn?"

1) I was no longer able to get the clarity that I wanted on the Conn between written middle C and written third space C, a clarity I once felt I had been able to get.

2) I had never been able to produce a sound at a mezzo-forte dynamic level that I really liked, especially in the middle register.

In short, I liked all the extremes of the horn (high, low, loud, soft) but not so much the middle ground (middle range, mezzo-forte volume).

Now I'm talking about myself, not anyone else, especially because I felt it had changed for me. Maybe it s just me getting older and that aging having an effect on my playing. I'm forty-eight and maybe certain parts of my technique are changing for the worse as I get older. I don't know, but while I had always felt that I had to manipulate pretty heavily with my embouchure in the middle register to get the sound quality/intensity mix I wanted (not age specific), I felt I had to go looking for something new to help my new found weakness because-I didn't seem to be able to beat the problem in the practice room. I tried.

MOUTHPIECE SWITCH

Now around 1979 1 had switched from a Giardinelli B8 mouthpiece to a Stork custom mouthpiece which John developed from a Ross Taylor mouthpiece (former 4th horn player, New York Philharmonic, 1st in Cleveland, San Francisco). The idea was not to copy the mouthpiece, but to start from it and come up with something new. John made up six versions at a time, all purposefully a little different, and I would take them down to the hall and play them for the guys in the brass section. We hit with the nineteenth or twentieth version, I don't remember which. The amazing thing was that when I played this particular mouthpiece (the present M1), everyone just said "that's it" after being rather qualified about all the others. This particular design really got something different and it was instantly hearable to these guys. So I started playing it and still do. But back to the Conn.

MORE ON SCHMID HORNS

Why Play a Horn in High Eb? Engelbert Schmid Horns at Osmun Music

Because I felt that this lack of clarity in the middle register was a recent development and therefore was probably me and not the horn, I tried going back to the B8 mouthpiece. But I felt that to get the balance of sound quality and intensity that I was looking for, I had to get all my tension from mouthpiece pressure, from jamming the thing into my mouth, and almost none from lip tension. So, of course, my flexibility and endurance went way down, my mouth hurt a lot and the middle register didn't get any better and about two months into the return to the B8 I crashed. I mean, I felt like I couldn't play at all. I was having trouble with everything and had to cancel a concerto outside of New York because I wouldn't have been able to get through it (Jacob concerto). So I thought "this B8 thing isn't working out for me at this time" (1992) and went back to the M1. I basically recovered immediately. Two weeks later I was doing Strauss 2nd in my home town (Elkhart, Indiana) and a week after that with the Philharmonic. I felt fine and I decided at that moment that from then on, the horn might change but the mouthpiece would not (I reached this decision with the help of one of my teachers, William Slocum, with whom I still consult because he has known my playing for twenty-seven years). But still I couldn't get clarity in the middle register in a lot of situations. So maybe it was totally my problem and not the horn's, but I seemed to need some help to do something about it.

AT BORDEAUX

So I guess from 1992 onward I was looking for a horn. Now of course of horns but I had never found anything I liked better than the Conn, so at first I tried to go to the old pre-letter series Conn route. This just didn't pan out for me. I came to feel pretty quickly that I preferred the horns that Conn was making in Eastlake, so the last few years I played one of those, no modifications, and enjoyed myself very much, except for the above two problems.

In the summer of 1996 Howard Wall (the fourth horn player of the Philharmonic) and I went to the Bordeaux Festival. It was a great time and Joseph Horowitz was just the greatest host, making everyone feel relaxed, special, etc. The hotel was crummy and the shoes I bought in Paris were too small, but that festival was one of the most pleasant times I've ever had. The French are tremendous.

And here was Schmid. Now it was a little different then than now because he actually had maybe six or seven different models to play that he hadn't already sold, from doubles, descants, triples, gold brass, yellow brass, etc. Well, Howard and I went into his showroom by ourselves about our second day there and I started playing all these models and it was clarity, clarity, clarity with rich, rich, rich, to me. Man, I was so happy. Howard told me that I sounded best on the yellow brass triple so I thought, okay I'll buy that. So Schmid comes back and I say I want this one and he says sorry, just sold that a couple of hours ago. I couldn't believe it."Who?"

"A guy here in Bordeaux."

"Is he married?"

"Yes.

"Was she with him when he decided to spend $8,500 on this horn?"

"No."

Ahh, a ray of light I thought. I mean it seemed unbelievable to me that I was about to pay about six times what I'd been paying for a horn, maybe it would seem crazy to her too. I was right there hoping. The guy and his wife walk in, she goes over to Schmid and says "I'm so happy" and I walked right out of there.

That was June. I took delivery in November of a medium yellow brass FBb-high F full triple. Now for this first horn purchase I wanted to go over and see the whole operation (now I just order through Osmun in Boston). So I get on the plane and by the time I get there, I've got a cold so bad I can't hear Schmid when he says hello. Not only that but they have radar on the autobahn or whatever highway I was on. Bummer. Anyway, we go out to the workshop and I can't hear anything I'm playing. I feel bad, the horn feels bad, every different bell I try on it feels bad. I was depressed. All told worth the flight over there and getting three bells, I was out about $11,000 and I saw no happiness in that little German town. I got back to New York, couldn't sleep for two days and didn't go near that horn for two weeks. I was so afraid I had just tossed that money out the window. I was afraid to play the horn and find out I really didn't like it.

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