‘I was a very run-about child. My father sometimes talks about that contradiction: completely hysterical at home, but then I was taking horn lessons and then I suddenly played those long, quiet notes.”
Music did not come out of the blue for horn player Mees Vos (29): his mother is a good amateur violinist, her father (Geert van Keulen) a composer and long-time bass clarinetist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Vos was six when he chose the horn. Although, in his memory it was the other way around. “It was a bit like Harry Potter and his magic wand. In the Harry Potter world, the staff chooses the wizard. Yes, yes, that is of course a huge cliché, but that choice still feels like it happened yesterday. The teacher at the music school thought I wanted to play the horn because it shone beautifully. Then I seem to have said: ‘No, because of its beautiful sound!’”
“There isn’t even a need for a melody, just the sound of the horn moves me. It’s a primal feeling. For example, just listen to the opening of the Fourth Symphony from Bruckner. That’s ‘just’ an open fifth. Hardly a melody. And yet. That sound!”
Very difficult instrument
“Not that I never hear myself cursed. It is a very difficult, unruly instrument. The tube is very long [bijna vier meter, maar dan opgerold, red.] and the mouthpiece is very small, so the notes are very close together in front of your lips. It’s actually a huge lip smack. That’s why you always see horn players sitting so stiffly still; you can miss notes by a hair’s breadth. I’m sometimes jealous of the clarinetists. They have other difficulties, but they can move freely.”
Orchestral work can also become a bit like civil service work
After the Amsterdam Conservatory, Vos went to the Weimar Conservatory in Germany, where the East German lessons were strict. A whip that Vos sought out to work hard. Even before he could complete his master’s degree, he won an audition to become principal horn player at the Staatskapelle Weimar.
“But after two years in the orchestra in Weimar, I suddenly saw it in my mind: mid-thirties, a safe orchestra job and the rest of the time sitting in the garden with an East German child on my lap. And that for the rest of my life. I didn’t want that at all.” He returned to the Netherlands to become principal horn player of the East Dutch orchestra Phion, but also to teach at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
Wish list
Because Vos really loves teaching, as he discovered in Weimar. He had increasingly started to guide students in the years under him, instead of studying himself. “Teaching feels deeply meaningful. It runs in the family: my mother gives painting lessons, my grandfather, the composer, gave composition lessons, his father taught at the royal academy in The Hague.”
During the entire conversation, on a terrace in Amsterdam, Vos sits on the edge of his seat, as he daydreams out loud about what could still lie ahead. Everything is clear that he still wants to be expressive and creative. Conducting? “No, not that. When you see how many hours you have to put into it before it makes any sense, and that half of the orchestra still thinks you are a zero… No, I do want to make music myself.” Then compose? “Maybe.” In any case, Vos does not see himself playing in an orchestra for the rest of his life, no matter how much he enjoys it now. “There are still certain symphonies on my wish list. The Second Mahler for example. Bruckner Six“But the East German specter is never far away. “Orchestra work can also become a bit of civil service work. You come to the rehearsal with your suitcase and your horn, where everything is neatly ready for you. And then you play a little again. That is absolutely creative, and nice, and safe, and it gives you energy; When it goes well it is very addictive. But I sometimes fear that it will become a golden cage.” Even if the Concertgebouw Orchestra were to call? “I would really like to do that. But not for centuries.”
John Williams
But, Vos emphasizes, that is all about the future. For now he is looking forward to playing solo for his own orchestra for two weeks. “Fun, and very exciting too. Naturally, you want to express your very best side to your colleagues.” Richard Strauss’ Second horn concerto he calls “perhaps the best concert that we horn players have. It actually has everything that makes music beautiful: excitement and commotion, a beautiful lyrical second part, big jumps, but also frivolity in the last part.”
“In the Netherlands you often hear horn concertos by Mozart or Strauss. If I could choose again, I would horn concerto by film composer John Williams doing. As far as I can find, this has never been done in the Netherlands. It’s modern Williams, just beyond Harry Potter and Star Wars. But still clearly Williams.”