BenGoldscheider

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News

  • 05 April 2024

    Ben Goldscheider performs world premiere of Huw Watkins’ Horn Concerto

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  • 12 January 2024

    Ben Goldscheider presents world premiere of Gavin Higgins' Horn Concerto

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  • 04 September 2023

    Ben Goldsheider debuts at Lucerne Festival

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  • 11 November 2022

    Double debuts for Ben Goldscheider

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  • 25 July 2022

    Ben Goldscheider: Proms Concerto Debut

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  • 03 December 2021

    Askonas Holt welcomes Ben Goldscheider to its roster for general management

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Press

  • Watkins, Horn Concerto - World Premiere

    Saffron Hall / Milton Court
    Apr 2024

    • Very much literally in the spotlight, Goldscheider gave a perfect account of the tricky Prologue...Goldscheider was massively sensitive, shading the final diminuendo to perfection. Goldscheider also triumphed in the passages of (difficult) low hand-stopping. There are some truly lovely harmonies here, and they positively glowed in this account.

    • Goldscheider made the tricky writing seem quite natural, always with lovely tone. Dapper and poised throughout, Ben Goldscheider seemed entirely unphased by the concerto's technical and physical demands, playing with poise and beauty of tone.

    • Bold, direct,and virtuosic, it proved a bright, sunny affair, showcasing the soloist’s unshakable embrasure,seamless breath control, and enviable technique. Both artists blew up a storm, Spence in full heldentenor mode and Goldscheider pumping out the decibels before popping in the mute for a magical depiction of Tennyson’s “horns of Elfland.” For William Blake’s “Elegy,” Spence was subtly sinister while Goldscheider’s songful melodies spun into space, his final phrase breathtakingly bent and muted by hand-stopping alone.

  • Higgins, Horn Concerto - European Premiere

    Muziekgebouw Eindhoven
    Mar 2024

    • British soloist Ben Goldscheider excels: his golden sound is pure and spacious, and it can withstand any devilish bounce

    • The squirming in the violins, their sliding tones and slow vibrato are as soundscape, the forest floor above which Goldscheider plays virtuoso with the timbres of his instrument: clear, shrill, muted.

  • Higgins, Horn Concerto - London Premiere

    Cadogan Hall
    Feb 2024

    • Goldscheider was simply terrific, throwing off the challenging horn writing with complete charm and aplomb. Goldscheider, playing from memory, brought and effortless sense of line and style to the music, along with a warm even tone. There was an engaging insouciance to his performance too, particularly in the more ornamental moments. The free flowing middle movement also showcased Goldscheider's line and elegance, and I loved the way he dared to fine the tone right down.

    • The soloist is asked to be a virtuoso when it comes to hand stopping – though that Goldscheider is. Goldscheider played with the utmost ease. Prior to the interval was Mozart’s conductorless Fourth Horn Concerto (the one with that rondo), with Goldscheider on extraordinary form.

  • Higgins, Horn Concerto - World Premiere

    BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff
    Jan 2024

    • Ben Goldscheider seemed untroubled by these demands, which included athletic trips through the registers, rapid changes of mute, and none of the cracks and blahts that usually punctuate even the best horn-playing and are, of course, always the instrument’s fault. It was a superb display.

    • Whether as a solitary, beautiful voice or one among many, in dialogue or in tandem with the orchestra, the soloist Ben Goldscheider did a sterling job....

    • Higgins realises an appropriately life-enhancing energy, embracing Goldscheider’s virtuosity... Two piccolos high in the air begin the slow movement, Goldscheider’s solo line then carrying a hauntingly beautiful feel, with string phrases falling like leaves.

  • Apartment House

    Wigmore Hall
    Nov 2023

    • Each and every member of the ensemble was outstanding...especially Ben Goldscheider, who was flawless in the hugely challenging horn part.

  • West Eastern Divan

    Europe Tour
    Nov 2023

    • Binness’s cello, Biron’s bassoon and Ben Goldscheider’s deftly characterful horn made their presence pleasurably felt – especially, for Goldscheider, in Beethoven’s variations on a Rhenish boatman’s song, “Ach Schiffer, lieber Schiffer”.

    • Buoyant and in the best sense infectious, the Scherzo, led by Ben Goldscheider’s miraculous horn playing, was both directed and collegial.

    • the UK's own Ben Goldscheider on French horn ... shone.

    • Daniel Gurfinkel’s silken clarinet and Ben Goldscheider’s swashbuckling horn made their mark in a sublime reading brimming with collegiate conviviality.

  • Joseph Phibbs, Horn Sonata (World Premiere)

    Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival
    Sep 2023

    • The premiere of Joseph Phibbs horn sonata...was the centrepiece of a concert that showcased the performers sheer delight at playing together. ...it received terrific performances from Ben Goldscheider and Tom Poster. Goldscheider dealt with the work's challenges with devastating aplomb...

  • Strauss, Horn Concerto No. 1 in E flat major Op.11

    Sinfonietta Cracovia, Krakow Philharmonic
    Jun 2023

    • Goldscheider is a true virtuoso who proves that the most kixogenic instrument can be played without kiks (bravo for the coda of the first movement!) - and with such a noble tone!

  • Britten, Seranade for Tenor, Horn and Strings

    Bath Festival Orchestra, Cadogan Hall
    Jun 2023

    • Goldscheider’s opening Prologue set the scene with commanding control and confident tone, all the more expertly in the Elegy’s closing bars, moving seamlessly in and out of muting. His athletic virtuosity in the demanding Hymn was matched ably by Tritschler’s nimble agility.

  • Holloway & Mozart, Horn Concertos

    Sacconi Quartet, London Kings Place
    May 2023

    • In the last movement the tone turns deeper when a 17th-century poem by Edward Herbert is set wordlessly to music, the solo horn, beautifully played here by Ben Goldscheider, tracing the pattern of the words.

  • Ethel Smyth, Concerto for Violin and Horn

    Royal Albert Hall
    Jul 2022

    • Ben Goldscheider found plenty of scope in Smyth's writing for pouring out molten tone. The finale has a rollicking exuberance, but the highlight is a deeply felt Elegy (enigmatically labelled "In memoriam") of rapturous beauty with some unearthly sonorities, spotlit by Urioste's soaring quietly violin.

    • The concerto was performed with great skill and affection by Urioste and Goldscheider, the two forming an effortless partnership and the work's technical challenges were hardly apparent. They were finely supported by Yamada and the orchestra.

    • Smyth's work deserves to be more than a curiosity, at least judging by this fine performance by Elena Urioste and Ben Goldscheider. The two play together in the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective and there was a harmonious sense of dialogue to much of their account. The first movement glowed, hardly a raised voice in amiable conversation, Goldscheider ensuring that his golden sound never overwhelmed Urioste’s slender but beautiful violin timbre. The central Elegy was truly ravishing, pastoral in nature and caressed by both soloists. Smyth’s rebellious nature – she was a prominent suffragette who was imprisoned for throwing a rock through a window of the House of Commons – emerges in the rambunctious finale where Goldscheider negotiated the multiphonics of the cadenza, where he has to sing and play at the same time, with aplomb.

    • Getting the piece right in performance can be tricky as the unusual combination of instruments can result in problems of balance, with the horn swamping the violin, if the conductor isn’t careful. Yamada, however, admirably ensured even-handedness. Elena Urioste (violin) and Ben Goldscheider (horn) were the soloists, the innate nobility of his phrasing judiciously offsetting her more effusive lyricism. The Elegy, in which Smyth develops two parallel melodies in tandem, giving neither prominence, sounded gorgeous, and the big, accompanied double cadenza that dominates the finale was done with engaging flamboyance and considerable bravado. Yamada, meanwhile, discreetly underscored the almost Italianate warmth of Smyth’s orchestration with its rippling harp and lovely woodwind writing. It was a most beguiling performance.

  • Jörg Widmann, Air for French Horn

    Dvorak Hall
    Apr 2022

    • The highlight of the evening for me, and judging by the applause for the audience, was Jörg Widmann's composition Air for French horn performed by Ben Goldscheider. This composition uses an open piano into which a player with a French horn plays and sounds the entire soundboard. In this way, both the tones of the brass instrument and the vibrating strings of the piano itself are captured in the reverberation, creating an unearthly effect, almost infinite tone. At the same time, Widmann works with a microintervalis and harmonic series that is perfect for the French horn and adds even more flair to the composition. Goldscheider was able to successfully tackle these challenges and put in an incredible performance. From the gently quivering tones and delirious pianissimo glissandos in the upper registers to the forte of passionate melodies – everything sounded convincing... when I saw before the beginning of the concert that it was the only solo piece, paradoxically I thought that this composition would be, as they say, "in numbers", but in the end it left the deepest impression of all.

  • Arnold, Schönberger & Gipps, Horn Concertos

    Album
    Mar 2022

    • Ben Goldscheider brings a soulfulness, a seriousness to the work that's compelling. In his hands, this is one of the great 20th-Century horn concertos. The angular staccato writing in the first movement is fearlessly handled, and he has fun with the finale's bluesy interludes. You really need this disc for the "Andante grazioso" though. Goldscheider's distinctive timbre, vibrato subtly and sensitively deployed, feels exactly right. He nails the movement's troubled heart, the horn cut adrift, meandering over a dissonant string chord... in short, a must-hear.

    • Ruth Gipps’s Horn Concerto is an undoubted masterpiece... perhaps the most significant asset of this concerto is the compelling orchestration. Regarded as demanding for the soloist, it requires a strong technique and the ability to deal with many interpretive issues. It is relatively short, yet a lot is packed into this limited space. This is my favourite work on this disc, in a superb performance by Ben Goldscheider.

    • Ben Goldscheider give sparkling performances in three late-Romantic concertos, two unjustly neglected mid-Century British works and the premiere by an Anglo-German contemporary composer... This is a terrific disc, and in many ways a daring one, featuring two rarely performed concertos and a world premiere. You suspect that it was something of a passion project for Goldscheider who performs all three works with great style and devastating aplomb.

  • Ruth Gipps, Horn Concerto

    BBC Symphony Orchestra, The Barbican
    Oct 2021

    • ...the music gave the excellent soloist Ben Goldscheider no chance for virtuoso flights, but his artistry still shone through his unforced eloquence and golden tone.

    • Goldscheider succeeded in producing an extremely warm and effective sound as he brilliantly tackled the first movement with its cadenza, the lively second and the duet with Elizabeth Burley on the celesta in the third...

  • Legacy: A Tribute to Dennis Brain

    Album
    May 2021

    • Ben Goldscheider’s album Legacy offers another example of Brain power, featuring one of our youngest and most succulent horn players in music new and old directly inspired by Brain’s artistry. The deepest musical rewards come from Poulenc’s memorial, Elegie, written in 1958, although for a powerful display of the instrument’s expressive breadth you can’t improve upon Huw Watkins’s Lament; Watkins also serves as Goldscheider’s persuasive piano partner. Another highlight is Malcolm Arnold’s solo Fantasy, a typical mix of knees-up and melancholy from a composer rarely on an even keel. Throughout, Goldscheider is almost his elder’s equal in smooth delivery and warmth, although the sunshine blaze of personality still places Brain on top.

    • The lyricism, the boldness of Goldscheider’s playing is very much in the Brain tradition. You hear this in one of two new commissions on the disc: Huw Watkins’ Lament is a worthy companion piece to Poulenc’s haunting Elegie. Goldscheider is marvellous in the latter’s slow conclusion, the long lines flawlessly sustained ... Watkins excels in Panufnik’s tricksy piano writing, Goldscheider’s vocalise soaring above. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Fanfare Salute to Dennis Brain is pithy and pungent, the final unresolved note hintingat a life cruelly cut short...

    • This tribute album from Ben Goldscheider, who is not much older now than Brain was in 1943, commemorates the great player’s work through music written for him and in his memory. Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy strikes the lightest note, and Britten’s Canticle III, setting war-time words by Edith Sitwell – achingly sung by tenor James Gilchrist – the deepest. Poulenc’s Élégie was written shortly after Brain’s death, Peter Maxwell Davies’s Fanfare Salute to Dennis Brain 50 years later. The last two works, Huw Watkins’s Lament and Roxanna Panufnik’s Sonnets without Words, were written specially for this album. The mood is sombre, doleful, even angry, the music-making a concentrated and probing reminder of the musician Britten described as 'that most wonderful of horn players'.

  • Goldscheider and Stollery, Recital

    Online Sounds Festival
    Oct 2020

    • Goldscheider’s earlier lunchtime concert (*****) pitted his remarkably focused, lyrical playing against live electronics from Stollery to magical effect. (It was all the more magical, in fact, because of its long-distance collaboration: Goldscheider had recorded his part alone in London, then emailed it to Stollery, who added the electronics separately.) The standout work among a concert of surprises was the 1978 Fantasie for horns II by Canadian Hildegard Westerkamp, which contrasted a live Goldscheider on orchestral horn against more prosaic signal horns recorded across the world – train horns, foghorns, factory horns, boat horns, even alphorns. It was a beautiful, deeply melancholy piece, brought wonderfully alive in Goldscheider’s supple, subtle performance, as though a refined concert instrument were calling for connection with its more functional siblings.

  • Erika Fox, Paths

    Goldfield Ensemble, NMC Recordings
    Aug 2019

    • ...Ben Goldscheider’s horn-playing alone is a joy, particularly in the theatrical, improvisatory gestures of Quasi Una Cadenza...

  • Debut: Music for Horn

    Album
    Jan 2018

    • Debut answers the necessary question about what separates Ben Goldscheider from the ranks of well-qualified horn players. He is a young man with a timeless gift.

  • Esa-Pekka Salonen, Horn Etude

    BBC Young Musician Competition
    May 2016

    • ...In the hands of 18 year old Ben Goldscheider, [Esa-Pekka Salonen’s] Horn Etude is an exhilarating thrill ride; Goldscheider becoming a musical Bear Grylls, fearlessly leaping through its dangerous terrain. You find yourself with him every step of the way...