German com­pos­er Paul Hindemith wrote more than forty sonatas. In addi­tion to at least one sonata for each stan­dard orches­tral wood­wind, brass, and string instru­ment, he wrote for a num­ber of less-com­mon solo instru­ments, includ­ing the English horn, the vio­la d’amore, and the althorn. Although he was pri­mar­i­ly a vio­la play­er, Hindemith owned and could play many of the instru­ments for which he wrote; he appar­ent­ly had a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in the bas­soon. An entry in the Heckel vis­i­tor’s log indi­cates that Hindemith pur­chased a bas­soon from the firm on October 9, 1927. Hindemith wrote his Sonate for bas­soon in […]
Columbia A2161
Auguste Mesnard was born November 17, 1875 in Cognac, France. He began his musi­cal career as a vio­lin­ist, study­ing at the Ecole Nationale de Musique d’Angoulème, and earn­ing a first prize from there in 1891. After an unsuc­cess­ful audi­tion to enter the Paris Conservatoire, one of his musi­cal col­leagues in Angoulème sug­gest­ed that he take up the bas­soon instead. He evi­dent­ly took to the instru­ment right away, as he man­aged to gain entry to Eugène Bourdeau’s bas­soon class at the Paris Conservatoire only two years lat­er (November 1893). He won a first prize there in 1897, and went on to bas­soon […]
I’ve writ­ten pre­vi­ous­ly about the three ear­li­est record­ings of Carl Maria von Weber’s Andante and Hungarian Rondo — two fea­tur­ing German-American bas­soon­ist William Gruner (1920 and 1926), and one with French bas­soon­ist Fernand Oubradous (1938). As a num­ber of peo­ple point­ed out, I left out anoth­er ear­ly record­ing by Eli Carmen from the late 40s. I did­n’t have a copy at the time, but I’ve man­aged to get my hands on one now. This one’s a bit of an odd­ball: it’s only the Rondo, it was record­ed for a chil­dren’s record label, and it was released on a vinyl 78rpm […]
The cover of Michael Naura's album Vanessa, showing the silhouette of an insect on a bright pink background
  The vast major­i­ty of peo­ple who have record­ed bas­soon in jazz con­texts have been dou­blers who pri­mar­i­ly play sax­o­phone, such as Illinois Jacquet, Frankie Trumbauer, and Ben Wendel. A very small num­ber of play­ers (Paul Hanson and Michael Rabinowitz are the best known) tru­ly spe­cial­ize in play­ing jazz on the bas­soon. But there is a third cat­e­go­ry as well: orches­tral bas­soon­ists who have occa­sion­al­ly ven­tured into jazz con­texts. In 1935, Sol Schoenbach record­ed four tunes by British jazz pianist Reginald Foresythe in a small group that also includ­ed Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. Kenneth Pasmanick, long­time prin­ci­pal bas­soon­ist of […]
Most of the ear­ly record­ings that fea­ture the bas­soon did so in a com­i­cal fash­ion. A hand­ful of artists record­ed Quentin Ashlyn’s song “The Bassoon” in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry, and I have in my col­lec­tion a cou­ple of very strange (at least to mod­ern ears) “laugh­ing records” from the same era that include the bas­soon. In 1911, Carl Borgwald record­ed Julius Fučík’s clas­sic “Der Alte Brummbär” in 1911 (released as “Polka Fantastique” in the U.S.). And in 1918, Edison released two some­what sil­ly piccolo/bassoon duets: “The Elephant and The Fly” and “The Nightingale and the Frog”, […]