Isaac Shieh: Caprice Reimagined

When we hear the natural horn today, it’s almost always in the context of period music. Why would a modern French horn player want to go back to the instrument’s valveless predecessor, so much harder to play, unless to capture as closely as possible the sounds that audiences of past centuries would have heard?

Well, Isaac Shieh, for one, has another reason. As an undergraduate he was assigned to play Mozart on the natural horn as an exercise to improve his French horn playing. And there, as he writes in his liner notes to Caprice Reimagined: New Works for Natural Horn, the natural horn chose him – as instruments do sometimes.

New and Old Music for Natural Horn

To see where he could go with the instrument, Shieh has paired the Twelve Caprices for natural horn by the 19th-century composer, educator, and natural horn player Jacques-François Gallay with new commissions by contemporary composers. The resulting recordings demonstrate Shieh’s gifts as a musician and, more generally, the potential for continued life for this ancient, “outdated” member of the brass family.

James B. Wilson, one of the commissioned composers, describes the natural horn thus: “The instrument is, at its core, a long brass tube that produces pitch using nothing but air pressure, a [metaphorical] embouchure of steel, and hand-stopping technique. It has no guard rails – playing it is an exercise in ferocious, athletic precision.” That’s what Wilson’s piece, “Chroma-Maxima,” calls for, with its intricate melodies. The capaciously talented Shieh is up to the challenge here and throughout the album.

Many of the commissioned composers are only in their 30s, a number of them previously unknown to me. Others, like Dal Fujikura, Timo Andres, Scott Wollschleger, and the prolific Michael Finnissy (who is nearing 80), have been on the scene for a while. But a commission for the natural horn is something of a rarity, so Shieh has added notably to the modern repertoire. The new works combined with the Gallay pieces are enough to fill two CDs, or over 120 minutes of music. Taken together, it’s a (perhaps uniquely) broad compendium of the instrument’s continuing capabilities – when it has “chosen” the right musician.

Tones and Techniques

Right at the top we hear the natural horn’s inherent microtonality in the melodic sections of “ele” by Fujikura. The piece also calls for blaring sounds and scratchiness, examples of techniques we might consider nontraditional (similar to what the same composer called for in his recorder concerto). Shieh pairs the piece with Gallay’s Caprice No. 2, a bright, peppy number that brings us back to the standard 12 tones of Western classical music. So we’ve seen already this difficult instrument showing off its multiple personalities.

Other works test other techniques. Shieh’s performance of Gallay’s Caprice No. 9, which has some impressive chromatic feats, also has a few notes that sink into an almost sine-wave like “flatness.” Articulation and dynamic control seem to be the main points of Lloyd Coleman’s “Sgraffito.”

A few of the works are for more than a single horn alone. Shieh multi-tracked the four parts of Timo Andres’ horn quartet “Loud Ciphers.” Chattering repeated notes alternate or collide with chorales in different timbres. It’s one of the album’s most striking pieces.

Also interesting is Georgia Scott’s “The Ghost in the Machine,” which uses multiple horn tracks to explore the musician’s “embodiment” vis-à-vis the instrument in the context of disability. (Scott and Shieh both have disabilities.)

Amanda Cole’s “Fabric of the Universe” includes an electronic drone on the notes of the harmonic series that the piece explores. (These are the open notes the natural horn “naturally” produces without manipulation). It’s paired with Gallay’s delightful Caprice No. 10, where Shieh displays several elements of his greatest virtuosity in just over two minutes.

“DOCK LEAF” by Robin Haigh closes the album with pretty, legato melodies reminiscent of “Shenandoah,” played against a bed of sounds from nature and something like wind chimes.

Expanding the Natural Horn’s Possibilities

Notable tracks include Grace-Evangeline Mason’s subtle “In the Garden of a Museum,” crafted on the foundation of a poem. Here Shieh appropriately gives the horn a sensuous quality like that of a human voice. Rockey Sun Keting’s “Chuan II,” inspired by the Tibetan horn, positions ululating phrasing in free space (think a brassy shakuhachi), along with a few vocalizations (think Ian Anderson’s flute playing) and elephant-like shouts.

Scott Wollschleger’s multi-track “YOU ARE PERFECT JUST AS YOU ARE” dives deepest into the natural horn’s microtonal possibilities. In other words, it will sound glaringly “out of tune” to Western ears, especially as it follows two of Gallay’s Caprices on the album. A variety of timbres and attacks add to its intriguing sound world. Parts of it suggest music from a warped brass quintet.

In contrast, “The Mastic Orchard” by Electra Perivolaris hews essentially to Western tonality, its liveliness deriving from evocative melodies and dynamic contrasts and accents.

Michael Finnissy shows off the instrument’s dynamic range and virtuosic potential in his own Six Caprices, reminiscent of (for example) Gallay’s Caprice No. 1 with which Shieh pairs it. Shieh produces an almost velvety timbre in the many quiet passages, elsewhere a bell-like sound, and in Finnissy’s Caprices 4 and 6, proof of the musician’s facility with nailing high notes in isolation, sometimes – even more difficult – very softly. Still, these six Caprices, with all their references to Italian opera of Gallay’s time, sound rather pedestrian to me.

As a former mediocre French horn player, I can probably appreciate Shieh’s technical accomplishments in these recordings more than the average listener. But anyone can take note of his musicality and the variety of compositional approaches. This isn’t a double album to listen to straight through; there’s too much solo horn playing to make that a continuous pleasure. But take it a little at a time and the natural horn will start to feel like what it was on past times: a natural member of the musical instrument family.

— Jon Sobel, 8.25.2025

“The Pandemic and the Lockdown Were a Blessing in Disguise for Me”: The Remarkable Story of Natural Horn Player Isaac Shieh

When I was offered the chance to interview Isaac Shieh by email, I jumped at the chance! Isaac Shieh is a promising young French horn player who went through a series of seizures and repeated instances of Todd’s paralysis starting in 2019. Ultimately, he lost much of the control and sensation in the right side of his body. He kept his career going by playing the valveless natural horn, despite its tricky intonation and the need for the player to rely entirely on his or her lips to generate different pitches. Shieh, a native New Zealander of Chinese ancestry, has just released a collection titled Caprice Reimagined, consisting of 12 caprices by French natural horn player, teacher, and composer Jacques-François Gallay (1795–1864) plus works by 12 living composers, some of them inspired by or linked to the Gallay pieces. Though at the start of his emailed responses Shieh wrote, “I am aware I am not a particularly eloquent writer,” the fact is he’s as eloquent a writer as he is a musician, and his responses needed virtually no editing at all.

In the notes to your release Caprice Reimagined, you wrote, “I became physically disabled in March 2019. I experienced the first of many Todd’s paralysis following seizures, and subsequent traumas resulted in a diagnosis of functional neurological disorder (FND) in which I experience functional weakness on the entire right side of my body.” When did you first become aware this was happening to you, how long did the process take, and what was the status of your horn-playing career before the disease struck?

My health had been getting progressively worse leading up to March 2019, so in a strange way, when I experienced my first Todd’s paralysis, my initial feeling was relieved (on top of the usual confusion I get post-seizure). I knew something was not quite right when I continued to experience weakness on my right side after my first Todd’s and I could not walk unassisted. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my personal life was also in turmoil and I experienced a series of emotional traumas caused by people close to me, which made my health deteriorate further. It was not until 2022, when I had the diagnosis of FND and received the right treatment, that I managed to walk unassisted again.

When it first happened in 2019, it was hard. Even though I was completing my master’s at the time, I was already working regularly with various period ensembles and orchestras around Europe, and was on trial with a contemporary music group in France and an orchestra in Ireland. I still managed to play well enough and worked as much as I could, but it did not feel comfortable at all. The pandemic and the lockdown were a blessing in disguise for me. It gave me a lot of time and privacy to figure out how to play the horn with an off-center embouchure placement, and practice with the new adjustments to the point where I felt confident in myself.

I still use my right arm (and right hand) to use hand- technique, which enables me to play the natural horn chromatically. I do have reduced control, so I rely a bit more on embouchure manipulation to bend pitches into place as opposed to very fine hand movements. Perhaps that’s why I can do the really fast technical stuff much more easily than some of my colleagues. I’m using more of my embouchure, tongue positioning, and air to execute these things, which is technically harder but more effective.

The natural horn is much lighter to hold than the modern horn, which makes it easier for me to play for a longer duration. I also play with an asymmetrical/off-center embouchure, which may affect the longevity of my playing career (hence the urgency to start this commissioning project).

It’s important to stress that my disability meant that I had to figure out how to play the horn (both natural and modern) slightly differently. It gave me new perspectives on life, but it is not a limiting factor when it comes to playing the horn to a professional standard. I now walk with a slight limp. I feel different about my horn playing, and there are things I find harder to do than previously, but my colleagues who have worked with me before and after my acquired disability have repeatedly told me they do not hear any differences in my horn playing.

When I read your notes, I immediately started to think of other classical musicians who became disabled and worked to continue their careers in spite of their health issues. All the names I came up with were pianists: Paul Wittgenstein, Leon Fleischer, Gary Graffman, Byron Janis. Are there any major wind instrument players besides yourself who have continued their careers despite becoming disabled?

I think one of the greatest barriers disabled musicians face is a lack of repertoire in which they can adapt based on their accessibility needs. The piano has an inherent advantage in that it has a substantial repertoire to adapt from, and Paul Wittgenstein has demonstrated that with the arrangements he made. His commissioning work further legitimized one-hand piano playing, both as a musical aesthetic and in a solo context.

That being said, there are a number of wind instrument players living with disability, born or acquired, who have successfully carved out careers in performance. One of the most extraordinary hornists I have come across is Felix Klieser, who was born without arms and plays the horn using the toes of his left foot with the horn mounted on a tripod. A group I work with, Paraorchestra, an integrated orchestra of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians, also features a number of musicians who identify as (D)deaf, disabled, or neurodivergent. [The odd spelling reflects the distinction Deaf activists make between “deaf” people, who are merely hearing-impaired, and “Deaf” people, who identify with and participate in the Deaf activist community.]

You mentioned that as an undergraduate you were advised by one of your horn teachers to learn Mozart’s music on the natural horn. How did you acquire the lip control to play natural horn, how long did it take, and did that undergraduate training help you?

Even though I think of the natural and modern horns as different instruments, there are a lot of similarities when it comes to airflow and flexibility, so playing the natural horn was not “foreign” to me when I first started. What I had to figure out are the right-hand positions required to make the notes in tune and “centered,” as well as how to refine my airflow to adjust and compensate for the different resistances and volumes as a result of using hand technique (there would be more resistance when playing a stopped note, and it would also sound softer when compared to an open note). It took me less than six months when I first started to be able to play Mozart’s Concerto No. 1, and I would say it took me another few years to be fluent with right-hand technique and have good control across the various timbres and intonation tendencies of the instrument.

Aside from Jean-François Gallay (1795–1864), all the composers represented on Caprice Reimagined are living: Dai Fujikura (b. 1977), Michael Finnissy (b. 1946), Timo Andres (b. 1985), Grace-Evangeline Mason (b. 1994), Rockey Sun Keting (b. 1992), Amanda Cole (b. 1979), Scott Wollschleger (b. 1980), Electra Perivolaris (b. 1996), Lloyd Coleman (b. 1992), James B. Wilson (b. 1988), and Robin Haigh (b. 1993). You mentioned in your notes that you needed to give some of them a fair amount of advice as to what the natural horn could do. Did you have any more input into the compositions, and what was the experience of collaborating with them like?

It was important to me that all of the composers I engaged and collaborated with had little to no experience writing for the horn, modern or natural. I wanted outsider perspectives on the instrument’s capabilities, whether that be technical, musical, sonic, or otherwise. I did create a series of videos that covered a range of topics related to the natural horn, and from that point, different composers chose to work differently.

Some of the composers chose to work really collaboratively. I think one of my favorite collaborations was with Dai Fujikura, in which he sent me short notational materials with instructions like “as wild as possible” or “the more out of tune, the better,” and I replied with video responses. He extracted and sampled sounds he liked from the videos and this process was repeated until we had a complete piece constructed. The whole collaboration was done on WhatsApp and the final notated score was the last thing we worked on together. The collaboration with Grace-Evangeline Mason was also quite hands-on in that we workshopped through all the notated material and reworked a lot of the passages to make them more musically evocative from a composition perspective or more practical from a performance perspective. For me, it was about respecting Grace’s intentions whilst providing her with ideas on how I can best realize those compositional designs on the natural horn.

On the other hand, some composers chose to hand me a completed score after a few initial workshops. I think one of the more extreme examples was with James B. Wilson, where I hadn’t seen any notated material until he handed me a complete draft. We were exploring ideas such as the Doppler effect in all our previous workshops, so I was not anticipating something so technical and chromatic! That was really fun, though, since it was almost like he was testing me to see how I would tackle the challenges, and only stepped in if he felt I needed “permission” to exert interpretive “freedom” when solving certain issues.

How was the project funded? The booklet credits the Arts Council of England. What percentage of the cost did they underwrite, where did the rest come from, and how did you get in touch with them to pitch them the project?

When I first started this project, I did not have any funding secured and I was transparent about that with the first four composers I contacted. In the cases of Grace-Evangeline Mason and Rockey Sun Keting, they were both doing their doctorates at the Royal Academy of Music at the same time as I was, so I knew there might have been additional incentives for them to take on a collaboration like this. Michael Finnissy had written for doctoral students at the Academy in the past and he agreed to this project simply because he was intrigued by the prospect of writing for the natural horn. With Dai Fujikura, it was originally meant to be a co-commission and I managed to secure funding from The Nicholas Boas Charitable Trust for that.

Arts Council England has a grant called Develop Your Creative Practice which is designed to enable individuals to focus on their development in their creative practice through activities such as network building and working with new collaborators.

For me, it was about developing myself as a creative collaborator through the making of new music, and I think I was quite fortunate in receiving the grant. The grant covered the commissioning fees for all of the composers, and the Royal Academy of Music provided me with a budget which enabled me to record using their facilities and engineers. In terms of the costs associated with releasing the album, I utilized the savings I have accumulated through freelance work as well as paid residencies. As a side note, the commissioning fees were not high, so the composers were more drawn by the prospect of writing for the instrument, working with me, or a combination of the two, rather than the fee itself.

I noticed that none of the pieces on Caprice Reimagined have piano or other instrumental accompaniments. Did you worry that two hours and seven minutes of unaccompanied natural horn might get monotonous? Is that why you included pieces like Timo Andres’s Loud Ciphers, Georgia Scott’s The Ghost in the Machine, and Scott Wollschleger’s YOU ARE PERFECT JUST AS YOU ARE, in which you play multiple horn parts via overdubbing; Amanda Cole’s Fabric of the Universe, which uses an electronic drone behind you; or Robin Haigh’s DOCK LEAF, which samples nature sounds and chimes?

To be honest, I was not expecting this much new music when I first started the project! Most of the composers had written longer (and in some cases, significantly more substantial) works than I asked for, and I was not going to complain that they wanted to write more for both the instrument and myself!

I never worried about the album sounding monotonous, partly because I selected 12 composers with distinctive and varied compositional voices. I believe that they would create pieces that would not only showcase the instrument in different lights, but also create different listening experiences. Initially, I wanted the commissions to focus purely on exploring and pushing the instrument to new directions without any external “help” (or “distractions”). I also wanted the new works to be practical and performable in live contexts, and I felt that unaccompanied solo natural horn would give the works the best chances of being regularly performed by myself, and hopefully by others.

That being said, I never explicitly said the commissions had to be strictly unaccompanied or purely acoustic, and I contacted composers who I imagined would incorporate electronics. Ultimately, I wanted great music that would highlight the natural horn in its fullest capabilities. If a composer felt the need to break some of the parameters and could justify why they wanted to use electronics or multitracking for musical reasons, I should not inhibit them from making the music they feel would be most compelling for the instrument.

Do I have plans for future commissioning projects for natural horn and other instruments? Absolutely, and I have always seen this project as the first step of hopefully many to come. However, I needed to know what the natural horn and I were capable of doing on our own before seeing how we could work with other instruments and people. I feel this project helped me realize my artistic potential and gave me clarity on future artistic directions.

Instead of starting the album with Jean-François Gallay’s 12 Caprices in order and then proceeding with the modern works, you interspersed them in between the new pieces and presented them out of score order. Why did you program the album that way?

It is important for me that Gallay’s Douze Grands Caprices and the new commissions are not seen as two separate entities that do not relate to one another. I assigned each composer with a specific Gallay Caprice in every composition brief. I did not intend them to quote the Gallay, but rather to engage with the material so they could understand what the natural horn was capable of and how it was utilized as a virtuosic solo instrument back in the 19th century. In that sense, the new pieces are responses to the Gallay Caprices, and I wanted to program the album juxtaposing the new and the old works so the two worlds can “talk” to one another.

You mentioned growing up as an ethnic Chinese in New Zealand. Did this subject you to discrimination and prejudice, and if so, how did that manifest itself?

I remember that during a school music tour when I was 15, I had a lesson with the then Principal Horn of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. I played William Mathias’s Horn Concerto, and in the following chat one of the first things he said to me was, “It’s such a shame you’re Asian, because you’ll have such an incredible career ahead of you, just not in Vienna.” I think he meant it in a very kind way. I don’t know if he intended it, but he made me realize that there are more than just musical obstacles that I’ll have to face.

I think I have always felt like an outsider trying to fit in, whether that is because of my race or me just being a bit weird and eccentric. Yes, I have faced discrimination and prejudice, but I think within every obstacle I faced, I was also presented with an opportunity to grow. Perhaps if everything was handed to me and I faced no adversity in life, I would not be the musician I am today, doing the things I love. I probably would not have had the motivation to practice very hard and get myself to this level of proficiency on the natural horn. Ultimately, this album is a liberation of the pressure to “fit in” and a celebration of me embracing who I am.

At least two of the composers on Caprice Reimagined— Georgia Scott and Lloyd Coleman—also identify as disabled. What was it like working with them? Do you feel a special bond with composers with disabilities?

It was interesting working with both Georgia and Lloyd, partly because I did not know Georgia before this collaboration, whereas I knew Lloyd quite well as colleagues and friends in Paraorchestra. With Lloyd, it was similar to some of the other collaborations, in that it was about two friends (who both happen to be disabled) collaborating together and we got to know each other better through the process. The extramusical inspiration is not related to themes surrounding disability, and whilst I could speculate that the extremities between the open and stopped notes might be due to how his disability influenced his perception of the natural horn, it might also have absolutely nothing to do with that.

On the other hand, I did feel a special bond working with Georgia, perhaps because we were strangers prior to the collaboration. Georgia’s compositions are inspired by lived experiences of disability, and her extramusical inspiration relates deeply with my personal lived experiences of disability. It was also refreshing for me to work with someone who thinks and cares deeply about themes surrounding disability and how these themes can be reflected and portrayed in performances. On a musical note, it was also a really rewarding experience working with Georgia because I had to learn how to play with live electronics as part of the journey, from learning about the optimal mic setup in a live context to playing with Ableton and triggering cues live. (I am a bit technologically challenged so it was a steep learning curve!)

Though your notes don’t identify Scott Wollschleger as a composer with a disability, the title of his piece, YOU ARE PERFECT JUST AS YOU ARE, is a major slogan of the disability rights movement. Did you get a sense of solidarity with a broader community of people with disabilities from playing his piece, or from making the album as a whole?

Even though I am aware of the wider connotations surrounding the title, I do not think it is intended to allude specifically to the disability rights movement. As Scott wrote in an email to me on May 16, 2023, “The title refers to a mantra I make an effort to say to myself and loved ones and it felt like a good title for the work because the piece uses the naturalness of the horn including its weirdness in a way that I hope is beautiful and affirming (and cool sounding!).”

That being said, I think the experiences of recording his piece, as well as making the album as a whole, have been about my path toward acceptance not only of the unique idiosyncrasies of the natural horn, but also myself as a person with all my quirks and flaws. I think rather than getting a sense of solidarity with a broader community of people with disabilities, I got a sense of belonging with people, disabled or otherwise, who create spaces where they can be curious and be who they are without fearing what others’ judgments may be.

— Mark Gabrish Conlan, 11.01.2025

This album brings to light a virtuoso career as extraordinary as it is unlikely. There are bravura flourishes here that barely seem possible. Soloist Isaac Shieh is by no means the first musician to say that his instrument chose him instead of the other way around. (As a very young child, Arthur Rubinstein recalled, he was given a toy violin to play, but he broke it out of frustration with its inability to produce the sound he wanted, after which his parents arranged piano lessons—Rubinstein remembers being enchanted by the piano from age two.) But Shieh could be the first modern player to be chosen by the natural horn, an instrument long ago replaced by the valve horn. Progress isn’t always progressive, however, and the great advantage of the valved horn, namely that it can play a chromatic scale with uniform tone, isn’t the last word.

Devotees of the natural horn like Shieh, who is of Chinese descent and New Zealand born before coming to the UK, value the natural horn’s so-called flaws and eccentricities. Its variable tone colors are seen as an asset, along with its rustic associations with the hunt, and its capacity for wildness at full cry. The principal horn in an orchestra is typically one of the highest paid members, along with the concertmaster and first-chair oboe, because a modern French horn is still a treacherous beast to tame, as is the natural horn, if not more so. After all, there is only a slim mouthpiece and the player’s lips that determine everything; the horn is otherwise just a coiled flared metal tube.

Explicitly or not, hornists are drawn in by the instrument’s unruly behavior and the tension of flubbing a note (half- humorously called a clam), which stands out glaringly when it occurs in the upper register, riding over the entire orchestra. The rudimentary construction of the natural horn belies its spectacular potential, as evidenced, for example, by Richard Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 1 from 1883, which was written for it. Spectacle is also a prime factor in Shieh’s program, but first a little context.

A committed commissioner of new works, for this collection Shieh has gathered together 12 new pieces by contemporary composers, interspersed with 12 tracks presenting a major historical work, the Douze Grands Caprices from 1835 by Jacques-François Gallay (1795– 1864), a professor at the Paris Conservatoire and acclaimed hornist who specialized in composing music for his instrument. The album’s title, Caprice Reimagined, is a nod to Gallay but just as much to Paganini, since his 24 Caprices, with their encyclopedic exploration of the violin’s capabilities, were Gallay’s model. The contemporary composers on the program were invited to take Gallay and his ambitious intentions into consideration, updating the virtuoso reputation of the natural horn in a modern idiom.

Such a long introduction doesn’t leave adequate space to critically comment on the two hours of music on this digital release, but I think I’ve given readers the tenor of its creativity. The composers provide helpful, readable notes for each piece, and of course online sampling is available at leading listening sites and stores. The first track, ele by Dai Fujikura, takes off immediately with trills and runs that call out like the horn equivalent of Flight of the Bumblebee. Slower but equally tense drama arrives in the body of the piece, which shows off the natural horn’s tonal contrasts provided by moving the right hand inside the bell.

These contemporary composers have the benefit of the natural horn’s theatricality and stunning presence when let off the leash. As his Caprices testify, Gallay was alive to the horn’s lyrical potential as well as its powers of display; musically he remains well inside conventional tonality and organizes his Caprices typically around a melody or fanfare that gets varied and embellished as it reappears. Gallay’s melodies are generic, but he succeeds eminently in expanding the listener’s appreciation for how sophisticated the natural horn became in its heyday.

Michael Finnissy’s Six Caprices is the only commission that uses “caprice” in the title, and the composer’s note cites Gally’s style as the starting point of his own approach. The resemblance gets to the point of sounding almost like pastiches, but the sequences of notes and the implied keys are a major difference. The result gains its spice by bridging two eras. Timo Andres’s ingenious Loud Ciphers grew from his desire to write a quartet for four natural horns, which was achieved with multitracking. It was almost inescapable to use four horns for expanded hunting calls, a version of which is treated in canons that form an arch as they rise and decay. A second more unpredictable thematic group offers interjected accents and disruptions.

No small part of the success of Loud Ciphers is that Andres worked with Shieh to select a different crook for each of the four parts, offering a distinctive personality to the same pitches and gestures depending on how the instrument was configured. Various echo effects are also enhanced in this way, resulting in a thoroughly riveting eight minutes.

New Music is often too bound up in conceptualized forms, a risk that Grace-Evangeline Mason runs in her contemplative In the Garden of a Museum, which is based, she informs us, on an American poem whose lines are paralleled by rather unvarying and unremarkable phrases from the horn, all of this referring back to a poetic form, the Pantoum, which in turn relates back to the Pantun, a Malay oral tradition. I don’t think the music can quite bear the conceptual load placed upon it.

As you’d expect, these composers had to educate themselves about the natural horn, often working closely with Shieh. Among the more contemporary-sounding results is Amanda Cole’s Fabric of the Universe, which incorporates her background with microtones and overtones. The open notes of the natural horn are explored in their partial while a pre-recorded electronic drone augments the foundational note. If the piece seems abstract and technical, its deliberate, very basic musical events have much the same effect.

I opened by saying that the virtuosity on display here is as extraordinary as it is unlikely, which needs a little amplification. Episodes of paralysis and seizures led Shieh to be diagnosed with a neurological disorder that threatened to be career-ending. Against the odds he succeeded by making the natural horn so intimate that it became “my voice.” His situation becomes even more moving in Georgia Scott’s The Ghost in the Machine, since she is a disabled composer living with cerebral palsy. Only a few works here attempt to create a unique sound world, which Scott achieves through multitracking, the limited use of extended techniques such as blowing air through the horn, and a vivid sense of theatricality. I could easily bypass Scott’s description of mind-body dualism and Descartes— her piece is strong enough to grip your attention without extraneous explanations.

This release is apparently the first in a project to be continued. Shieh’s exhilarating playing and the imaginations of the composers he has chosen make the prospect of a continuation very enticing.

— Huntley Dent, 11.01.2025

Isaac Shieh’s incredible personal story is told in my interview with him for this issue. In the proverbial nutshell, he was a rising young French horn player when in 2019 he went through a series of seizures that led to neuromuscular events called Todd’s paralysis. Eventually, after a series of them, he was diagnosed with FND (functional neurological disorder), which meant, as he wrote in the liner notes to this release, “I experience[d] functional weakness on the entire right side of my body.” While this condition presented new challenges to playing the modern valved French horn, Shieh not only continues to use his right arm (and right hand) for both the modern and natural horn, but he has also learned how to play these instruments in new and different ways. Although he has reduced control, Shieh relies more on embouchure manipulation to bend pitches as opposed to fine hand movements.

Shieh’s command of this notoriously tricky and difficult natural horn would be impressive even without his backstory. This release, Caprice Reimagined, takes as its spine a group of 12 caprices for unaccompanied natural horn by French horn virtuoso, composer, and teacher Jacques-François Gallay (1795–1864). Shieh recruited 12 modern-day composers each to write response pieces to a Gallay caprice. As he explained in our interview, “I did not intend them to quote the Gallay, but rather to engage with the material so they could understand what the natural horn was capable of and how it was utilized as a virtuosic solo instrument back in the 19th century.”

As impressed as I was with this album, both the overall concept and the specific pieces on it, there were two things that bothered me about it. One was the fact that two hours and seven minutes of unaccompanied natural horn started to seem monotonous and boring. That’s why I felt things livened up when we got to pieces like the Andres, Scott, and Wollschleger works, which used multiple horn parts (all played by Shieh through overdubbing); the Cole, which accompanied Shieh with an electronic drone; or the Haigh, which added sounds from nature. The other thing that annoyed me was that instead of playing the Gallay caprices first, in score order, Shieh interspersed them with the modern pieces.

Since I was going to interview Shieh anyway, I decided that instead of making snarky comments about these aspects in my review, I’d ask him about them and see what he had to say. He had good reasons for both of these decisions. Regarding the lack of piano or any other conventional instruments as accompaniments, he said, “I never worried about the album sounding monotonous, partly because I selected 12 composers with distinctive and varied compositional voices. I believe that they would create pieces that would not only showcase the instrument in different lights, but also create different listening experiences. ... I also wanted the new works to be practical and performable in live contexts, and I felt that unaccompanied solo natural horn would give the works the best chances of being regularly performed by myself, and hopefully by others. That being said, I never explicitly said the commissions had to be strictly unaccompanied or purely acoustic, and I contacted composers who I imagined would incorporate electronics.”

On his decision to salami-slice the Gallay Caprices and alternate them with the modern works, Shieh said, “It is important for me that Gallay’s Douze Grands Caprices and the new commissions are not seen as two separate entities that do not relate to one another. I assigned each composer with a specific Gallay Caprice in every composition brief. ... In that sense, the new pieces are responses to the Gallay Caprices, and I wanted to program the album juxtaposing the new and the old works so the two worlds can ‘talk’ to one another.” I respect Shieh’s answers but I’m not sure I entirely agree with them. Frankly, I found the album more pleasant listening when I rearranged the playlist to play the 12 Gallay caprices in score order, then the six Finnissy caprices, then the rest of the modern works. That’s one of the great advantages of a digital release; you can second- guess the artist and program it pretty much however you like.

Still, I found Caprice Reimagined a marvelous work, combining (relatively) old and new music and showing off the amazing possibilities of the natural horn as an instrument. Even if Isaac Shieh didn’t have such a compelling history, this would still be a major release, ably demonstrating the potential of the natural horn and maybe inspiring more musicians to take it out of mothballs and start examining its potential.

— Mark Gabrish Conlan, 11.01.2025

Anyone who plays the natural horn is brave: the security of the compensating double or even the single B♭valved horn is gone, and it is just you, your right hand, your lip, the valveless instrument, and an absolute truckload of harmonics. The higher you go, the more harmonics there are to trip you up. Anyone who plays the natural horn in contemporary music scores is braver still, so let’s welcome Isaac Shieh as he presents Caprice Reimagined: New Works for Natural Horn.

The thread here is the composer Jacques François Gallay (1795–1864), whose Douze Grands Caprices, while fully presented, are interspersed between the other works, the first two appearing in reverse order and after the Fujikura. First published in 1835, Gallay’s Caprices are specifically for the natural horn. Unsurprisingly, Gallay was himself a horn player: he had a Méthode published in 1845. He succeeded his teacher, Louis François Dauprat (1787–1868), as Professor of Horn at the Paris Conservatoire. He also (uniquely, probably) wrote a set of unmeasured Preludes for horn (there is a PhD dissertation from Ball State University about these, if anyone wants to go deep down the Gallayan rabbit hole). Indeed, the opening of the first Caprice is unmeasured (not the whole Caprice: we do at least get bar lines and four beats to a measure later). Although etudes by Kopprasch, Neuling, and the like have greater traction with teachers nowadays (I particularly remember Kopprasch from my studies), Isaac Shieh persuades us that Gallay’s music is well worth listening to in its own right.

Here, the First Caprice follows the Second Caprice, which itself follows a piece by Dai Fujikura. So how does Gallay sound after music which is very much of its time? First, though, the Second Caprice (as we hear that before the First). Marked Poco agitato and with an instruction Con abbandono e espressione, this is fixated on a three 8th-note anacruses. Shieh takes the harder of the two options when it comes to the more open, quasi- improvised passage. Gallay’s mixing of free and fixed notions is fascinating.

But how do we hear that after Dai Fujikura’s ele? We should perhaps bear in mind that Shih commissioned all of the new pieces here in response to the Gallay pieces. When I reviewed Fujikura’s 2003/4 piece Fifth Station for Fanfare (30:6) I referred to the composer’s dramatic intent; his 2010 piece Fluid Calligraphy examines Japanese calligraphy in music, with the violinist’s bow as the “pen” (Fanfare 39:6). The present piece, ele, dates from 2021 and is indeed based on Gallay’s Grand Caprice No. 2, but we hear the “response” before the “call.” The most important facet here is that the “microtonal” aspects are shaped by the instrument itself and not by the composer imposing tunings: think, perhaps, of how Britten uses deliberately destabilizing yet naturally occurring tunings in the Prologue to his Serenade for tenor, horn, and strings, where the (played) B♭ and F♮ (sounding E♭ and B♭ respectively) are both expressively tuned, one might say, and require no “bending” from the player. It all begins with a lip trill, superbly done here; that trill becomes the constant, a fluctuating mid-range pedal, around which more raucous explosions occur. Fujikura references hunting horn tropes: a pining sustained note calling out into the wilderness, while also exploring the brassy, stopped notes available. It is perhaps Shieh’s expressive lyricism that is most impressive, though. Hearing Gallay’s second Caprice after that offers something of the feel of nearing a harmonic clearing; and yet the two “voices” of Fujikura and Gallay “call” each other across the centuries. The First Caprice then offers a truly exploratory place, again unmeasured for a significant amount of time.

We hear, then, Michael Finnissy’s Six Caprices after the first Gallay Grand Caprice. Finnissy’s music is not exactly known to be easy for either executant or audience, but Shieh has said that this is one of the few pieces that feels easier every time he plays it. The score for Finnissy’s Caprices does widen he scope a little by stating it is for “natural horn or any wind instrument,” and indeed, while stopping is necessarily present, in the first Etude there are no extended effects (chords, for example). The Second Caprice seems to challenge the musician with silence; how to make the music’s phrases speak, and link, across extended gaps. The writing is both fascinating and covertly fearsome: while lyrical, the challenge is that Finnissy writes in embellishments, quick ones, that could easily sound like slips. Shieh’s performance is pitch perfect. The third Caprice is more playful, the challenge here agility in the mid-range, while the fourth revels in extreme dynamic and registral contrasts. All credit to Shieh for his placement and attack (the first refers to pitching, the second to tonguing). I kept thinking it would segue into the Prologue from the Britten Serenade at any moment.... Hand-stopping colors the lines of the fifth Caprice; Shieh maintains a perfect sense of line. The final Caprice asks those silences between notes in extremis, an exercise in pointillism (and if you are the horn player, attack). Now, the innocent ear will probably not pick up (mine certainly didn’t) that Finnissy refers to Rossini’s opera Riccardo e Zoraide in the first Caprice. He does, however, extricate aspects of vocal writing from Offenbach and Donizetti as well as reconfiguring gestures more generally from the time Gallay was active.

The composer Timo Andres has appeared several times previously in Fanfare. His 2022 piece Loud Ciphers receives its “online premiere” here, as it is a multitracked horn quartet. Basically, chorale meets stuttering repeated notes flecked with haphazard accents and a “layered chorale”; Shieh speaks of the experience of recording this as seeing the piece from four different angles. The music itself is exciting, a sequence of waves (“canonic builds and decays,” in the composer’s own words). The sound world is relatively easy on the ear; simultaneously sounded open and stopped notes enable a fine variety of texture.

Returning to Gallay in the light of the Andres and the Finnissy emphasizes the relative innocence of Gallay’s world, but also his effectiveness of gesture and his own imagination. Marked Allegro poco agitato, No. 9 is in itself wide-ranging. While I could nitpick at the difference in articulation between measures six and eight (notated the same, but different pitches), it is the added fermatas in measures 16 and 17 that raise an eyebrow: the silences are needlessly emphasized by extension (unless there is another edition: I used the 1835 Alexandre Petit (Paris) edition). The Fifth Caprice is a Menuetto which again uses a three-note anacrusis figure; Shih’s performance is full of character, emphasizing the minor-mode aspect of the piece.

I very much enjoyed attending the world premiere of Grace-Evangeline Mason’s The Imagined Forest at the Proms in 2021 (the year of its composition): the performers were the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Domingo Hindoyan. The piece has post-Impressionist tendencies; Mason makes much of composing intuitively, but it is clear this goes hand in hand with a honing process toward the final item. Here, we have In the Garden of a Museum (2022). There is indeed a sense of the night about Mason’s music, a search for the perfect expression of that intuition, and as Shieh points out, here is a meeting of composer with a decidedly imperfect instrument. The inspiration here is a poem by Stuart Dischell, “She Put Her Lipstick on in the Dark,” about an encounter in the garden of a museum (hence Mason’s title). The poem uses repetition in a sort of hypnotic manner. The music follows the (Malay Pantun) structure of the poem, with melodic units repeated instead of phrases. Just as Gallay’s Caprices are recontextualized via juxtaposition with new works, so the material of Mason’s composition is recontextualized by proximity to new melodic “neighbors” though a sort of musical shuffling. The use of the right hand to “bend” pitches is an effective part of Mason’s armory. A fine piece (and a great poem, to boot).

The Third Caprice of Gallay that follows is one of the unmeasured ones, and has no tempo indication, just Dolce. The piece does have structure, though, rising to a substantial climax with a sort of post-climactic “song.” A very different type of song occurs in Chuõn II by Rockey Sun Keting: here, the piece is inspired by Tibetan horns. Shieh decided not to research that sound in advance, fearing the result would be an “imitation”; and interestingly, he found the end result, when he finally heard them, was similar. The title has points of contact with the English words “river” and “flow”: a sort of continuous development, but with the contours suggested by the composer. There are some effects that I suspect are a singing (or perhaps growling?) though the horn while playing another note. The music does sound more Oriental than Occidental, a sort of mix between Alphorn and shakuhachi.

Amanda Cole is another name new to me (and to the Archive). Her Fabric of the Universe was composed in 2024, two years after Keting’s piece. While the natural tendency of contemporary composers seems to be to explore the horn’s ability to create effects, Cole concentrates instead on the “open” notes on the horn, those of the harmonic series. An electronic drone generated by the relevant harmonic series is in play here. “When Issac plays this piece, I feel the beauty of the fabric of the universe is revealed,” says the composer, hence the title. There is something of the opening of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathusra about this; when an extra, higher “drone” is added, we move from the chthonic to the celestial, the two polarities embracing the horn’s soliloquy. The piece does indeed speak of eternities such as the Universe provides; so at less than five minutes it feels as if one is somewhat shortchanged. But perhaps those freedoms extend to the unmeasured aspect of the 10th Caprice, especially as, after all that emphasis on the open notes, No. 10 begins with a nice open figure based on a (notated) C-Major arpeggio. Shieh’s sound and agility here remind me of Barry Tuckwell (although not as brash as Tuckwell could be: remember the Punto recordings?).

The Fanfare Archive also welcomes Georgia Scott (born 1992) with her 2024 piece The Ghost in the Machine. This is an exploration of body-mind dualism through the prism of disability and explores that dualism via Descartes. Scott creates a unique sound world in which layered lines seem to grow organically, and also to interact via some sort of “communication system.” Scott’s world is a million miles from that of Gallay. The juxtaposition here is with Galley’s 12th Caprice, which is a set of variations on his op. 31 (just known as “Solo No. 8”). The theme, presented at Andante con moto, is indeed ripe for variation. The first is con grazia, and it certainly is in Shieh’s lovely performance, phrasing superbly considered. Leggieramente is the indication for Variation II, Shieh’s tonguing light as a butterfly. Sixteenth-note triplets meet couplets in Variation III (now ben leggiero) before velocity increases for the next outing. Shieh’s con forza is nicely on point, providing a focal point for the Caprice. It seems churlish to complain about the final top C (mine was never anything to write home about, trust me) but it does lose some force, almost as if there was some “water” in the instrument on that take. I wonder, too, if the Caprice No. 8 is just a bit too quick? The tempo is Allegro maestoso, and this is more Allegro sans qualifier. Perhaps the idea was maximum contrast to the lovely melody of the Molto dolce e ben legato section?

Composer Scott Wollschleger has been multiply reviewed in Fanfare, just not by me. His rather shouty title YOU ARE PERFECT JUST AS YOU ARE reveals a work that explores the “microtonal tendencies” of the natural horn. Again, think of that Britten Serenade Prologue: is the open (sounding) B♭ just out of tune or is it a microtonal adjustment? Multitracked, the natural horn’s tuning “idiosyncrasies” (Shieh’s word) are evident early on. Gallay’s Caprice No. 11 is quoted in Wollschleger’s piece and was the primary inspiration; it is heard in pure form immediately afterwards. Wollschleger is right when he refers to Gallay’s melody as beautiful. Wollschleger’s multitracked horns are carefully placed in the sound area (headphone listening is recommended). Not only are the lines multitracked, but the composer also asks for multiphonics (third movement); bur it is the sixth and final movement that feels so impressive, a “clearing.” And then, we hear the Gallay original, the Caprice No. 11, marked Adagio quasi andante, with an added con sentimento. Interestingly, Shieh uses slowish closings and openings of the right hand, allowing for more calibrated transition between open and stopped notes, as an expressive device. Shieh also offers some truly beautiful phasing in the Allegro of this Caprice.

Another new name to the Fanfare Archive is Electra Perivolaris, who was a classmate of Shieh’s at the Academy. She often works with the natural world, and her piece not only works with the natural horn, but tests its limits. The inspiration is the mastic tree, so prevalent on the Greek island of Chios. She refers to the timbre of the natural horn as both “fragile and visceral,” while the cyclic aspect of Nature is also reflected in the work. Shieh hits the opening “screamer” bang on. There are huge demands made here (including extremely rapid shifts between stopped and open notes), all negotiated with seeming ease. On a musical level, this might not be the most inspired premiere here, but it sure carries a punch.

Two sections, both marked Allegro moderato, meet in Gallay’s Caprice No. 7, the dotted 6/8 rhythms of the first (ben marcato) meeting the twists and turns of the 4/4 second: musically, this is one of the most rewarding of the Gallay pieces, and the care Shieh has lavished on his interpretation is everywhere evident.

Shieh has spoken about his disability and how he perceived things differently from the norm. This was part of the inspiration for composer Lloyd Coleman; the two met through their involvement with Paraorchestra. Coleman’s title refers to an artistic technique, sgraffito, the act of scratching through one surface to reveal another underneath. Coleman’s piece opens and closes with fanfares which hold a central section of increasingly obsessive writing, but it is the reflective nature of the fanfares (they are far from in-your-face) that linger. There are perhaps more traditional elements of fanfare (albeit in miniature by a repeated anacrusic figure) in Gallay’s Caprice No. 6, and what a performance Shieh gives, truly honoring Gallay’s specified leggiero e sempre staccato.

James B. Wilson was the first composer to receive a commission from the now world-famous Chineke! orchestra. Shieh describes Chroma-Maxima as “colourful and fun,” a piece which untethers the instrument from the constrains of the harmonic series. The slip-slidey opening seems to be part of this loosening of the series’ hegemony, and it is not long before intervallic angularity demands virtuosity from the performer. The piece is attractive above and beyond its virtuosity; there is a playful element that is most appealing, and Shieh himself seems to enjoy himself (despite, or, who knows, perhaps because of the music’s demands).

The final Caprice we hear is No. 4, and this one is properly capricious. Light as a feather, Shieh’s tonguing and lighter tone are perfect. The theme of the caprice could surely birth a fine set of variations. The final commissioned work is by Robin Haigh, DOCK LEAF. Perhaps Haigh has a penchant for solo instruments, as Samoyed Paganini is one of a set of contemporary variations on Paganini’s famous final Caprice as recorded by Fenella Humphreys on her Rubicon disc Caprices (see Fanfare 46:1). DOCK LEAF seems to begin with 25 seconds of silence. It is an antithetical response to the Fourth Caprice, reflective at core. There are some natural recorded sounds here, too, plus some marimba-like chimes; the overall effect is highly calming, the horn’s song like a cooling Alpine call. The composer refers obliquely to the reasoning behind the title, that his piece could “act as a sort of balm for those who hear it, cooling the sting of contemporary life for six minutes.” Dock leaf, of course, relieves nettle stings (there is no explanation for the all-caps of the title, though).

Shieh became physically disabled in 2019; this challenge acted as a catalyst for re-evaluation, both Shieh the man and Shieh the horn player, and this project is the outcome. Shieh’s research is taking place at the Royal Academy of Music in London; his supervisor is Neil Heyde, whom may readers will know as the cellist of the Kreutzer Quartet. While arguably the finest living exponent of the natural horn is Pip Eastop (whose own pieces for the instrument boast a severely limited playership: try his Set the wild echoes flying, available on Spotify), it is good to see he has company up there on the top shelf in the form of Isaac Shieh.

Beyond doubt, Shieh is a force to be reckoned with, and his commissioning achievements are to be lauded. A most enriching release.

— Colin Clarke, 11.01.2025

In the liner notes for his new recording, Caprice Reimagined, Isaac Shieh explains: “I became physically disabled in March 2019. I experienced the first of many Todd’s paralysis following seizures, and subsequent traumas resulted in a diagnosis of functional neurological disorder (FND) in which I experience functional weakness on the entire right side of my body. When it first happened, I thought it was the end of my career as a horn player. But it was also that moment that made me realise that I want to perform; I need to perform, and the natural horn is my voice.” Isaac Shieh has since established himself as one of the foremost natural-horn virtuosos, and a respected scholar on the subject of his chosen instrument.

In Caprice Reimagined, Shieh pursues a venture in the tradition of that undertaken by the Austrian concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein. After losing his right arm while serving in World War I, Wittgenstein commissioned several prominent composers to create works for performance by piano left hand. In Caprice Reimagined, Shieh uses the Douze Grands Caprices, op. 32 (1835), by the French natural horn virtuoso Jacques- François Gallay, as the starting point. These charming, bel canto-inspired melodic virtuoso pieces for solo horn are interspersed throughout Caprice Reimagined, although not in sequential order. The Gallay Caprices are juxtaposed with a dozen works for solo natural horn by contemporary composers, commissioned by Shieh. The various composers explore modern elements, including microtones, electronic music, overdubbing, sound effects, etc. But as in the case of the Gallay Caprices, all of the Shieh commissions celebrate the unique timbre, power, virtuoso potential, and lyric beauty of the natural horn. And Shieh performs the music, old and new, with breathtaking virtuosity, glorious tone, and an irresistible exuberance. Shieh’s lovely program notes, along with those of the commissioned composers, are most welcome. An extraordinary achievement on every level. Recommended.

— Ken Meltzer, 11.01.2025