An incredible feeling when you get it right; horn-player Martin Owen on performing Mozart’s complete horn concertos with Manchester Camerata

Martin Owen, Manchester Camerata, Gábor Takács-Nagy at the Stoller Hall (Photo; Rob Everett)

When horn player Martin Owen and I met to chat about his performances of Mozart’s Horn Concertos with Manchester Camerata, our conversation began with the slightly unlikely topic of a health scare that Martin had a few years ago. The context being that he feels that to do full justice to Mozart’s concertos you need life experience, nothing helps more than love and loss, pain and heartache in your life. In fact, Martin played and recorded the fourth concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra around 20 years ago but his current concerts with Manchester Camerata, and Gábor Takács-Nagy at The Stoller Hall in Manchester (Concertos Nos. 1 & 2, plus Concert Rondo on 2 April, Concertos Nos. 3 & 4 on 23 May) represent the first time he has performed all the concertos and after the second concert, they will be going into the studio to record them for Chandos, a logical extension to the orchestra’s Mozart Made in Manchester series.

His approach to Mozart is very different now from what it was 20 years ago, you have different expectations and a different approach as you get older so the way a performer copes is inevitably different. When he was younger, he would have gone hell for leather at the concerto’s opening, aiming for excitement and adrenalin, but his approach is now more considered. Martin is performing on a modern instrument but whilst he feels that modern values in Mozart veer towards the ideal of smooth tone, he is interested in getting a real variety of dynamics in the performance. He comments that he no longer thinks that aiming for perfection is the only idea. He points out that when Mozart wrote his concertos, the invention of the valve was 35 years away; Mozart’s friend, Joseph Leutgeb for whom the concertos were written, played a natural horn. That is a horn with no valves, whereas Martin’s modern instrument features valves of titanium and it also has a larger bore than older historical instruments.

Martin Owen (Photo: Davide Cerati)

Yet Martin’s performances also include nods to historical information, not just the notes as Mozaart’s scores for Joseph Leutgeb are littered with jokes and swear words. In some concertos, Mozart used different coloured pens, and Martin feels that the scores demonstrate quite how much fun Mozart and Leutgeb were having, and this personal link seems to separate the horn concertos from Mozart’s other major concertos. In the slow movements of the horn concertos, Mozart has written some of his most beautiful music, music which is so difficult to bring off. You need to be able to turn a phrase so beautifully and so perfectly, and Martin finds it an incredible feeling when you get it right.

Martin’s collaboration with Manchester Camerata came about as a result of a discussion between Martin and Ralph Couzens of Chandos Records about who to ask to join him in performing Mozart’s Horn Concertos. Both men alighted on Manchester Camerata because of their wonderful Mozart Made in Manchester series, performing and recording all of Mozart’s Piano Concertos with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-Nagy at The Stoller Hall in Manchester [see my review of the 2023 concert].

When Martin and I chatted, he had already performed Concertos Nos. 1 and 2, plus the Concert Rondo K371 at the first concert (2 April 2025).  Martin finds the orchestra’s energy and vibrancy on stage to be truly astounding; every member is invested in the concert and the music, open to everything that goes on. Performing with the Manchester Camerata was like playing chamber music with a group for the first time, developing relationships with the players and with Gábor Takács-Nagy. He describes playing with them as electrifying, they are super flexible and he could take risks, which made it a bit different. He has never known this before with a concerto, the flexibility and ease of open-minded musicians.

The programme for their first concert featured a couple of interesting musicological issues. Written in 1781, the Concert Rondo was the first work Mozart wrote for horn and orchestra, something of a trial run for the concertos. However, it turns out that the standard edition, as recorded by many of the horn greats of the past, is lacking some 60 bars. These were only discovered in 1990 and in our interview Martin brings out a score and recording to emphasise how much difference the missing bars make.   

Despite the numbering, Concerto No. 1 was the last one that Mozart wrote and it was unfinished at the time of his death. In just two movements, the second was completed by Mozart’s pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Though there have been other completions, Martin is happy to take the Süssmayr one, feeling that it is apt as Süssmayr was Mozart’s pupil. The second movement includes a contrasting middle section that some commentators think was intended by Süssmayr as a lament for Mozart using material from Mozart’s Requiem (which Süssmayr was also working on completing). The concerto is the only one Mozart wrote in a slightly lower key, commentators suspect that he was being kind to the now somewhat older Leutgeb!

Francesca Dego, Alessandro Taverna and Martin Owen recording Brahms’ Horn Trio for Chandos Records

Mozart was working on Concerto No. 1 in 1791 when he was also working on the Requiem and had just completed The Magic Flute and La Clemenza di Tito. Martin finds it fascinating the way so many pieces can be interlinked. He points out that Brahms’ Horn Trio in E Flat (for horn, violin and piano) was written at the same time as the initial version of the German Requiem and that both the slow movement of the trio and requiem reflect Brahms’ emotional reaction to the death of his mother. Martin recorded Brahms’ trio with his trio, Francesca Dego (violin) and Alessandro Taverna (piano) on a recital disc for Chandos released last year which also features a trio version of Mozart’s Horn Quintet, Ligeti’s Hommage a Brahms which was very much inspired by Brahms’s trio, and Schumann’s ‘Duet’ from Phantasiestucke.

Our discussion then veers off, exploring how the young Brahms took time settling on the exact form of works, sometimes recasting them in different forms (his Piano Quintet was variously a string quintet and a sonata for two pianos before reaching its final form). Martin commented how some contemporary composers seem profligate whereas others are more focused and he mentioned Oliver Knussen, whose 1994 Horn Concerto Martin performed at the 2009 BBC Proms, and who notoriously suffered from writer’s block.

Martin has been busy in the recording studio. He was recently in the studio with the BBC Philharmonic to record Ruth Gipps’ Horn Concerto, and his most recent disc on Chandos is a recording of romantic concertos with John Wilson and the BBC Philharmonic for Chandos, featuring both of Richard Strauss’ Horn Concertos, Weber’s Concertino in E Minor, Op.45 and Schumann’s Concertstück in F Major for Four Horns, Op.86. Martin comments that Schumann’s piece, using four solo horns, is such a nightmare for orchestras to programme if they want to use horns from the orchestra (which means it would be unfair to ask the players to do much else in the concert). Yet it is such a life-affirming piece. When Schumann wrote it, valves had been around for just 20 years and he was trying to show what you could do with this new technology. The work is technically difficult, even with valves, and complex, with high writing for the first horn. Yet Brahms, some thirty years later was still writing for natural horns.

Martin is currently principal horn with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the BBC is very supportive of him having a solo career too. However, he points out that this does entail plenty of hard work and rather a lot of travel. He has worked a lot in Italy, not only giving concerto performances but performing with his trio with Francesca Dego and Alessandro Taverna. Playing chamber music is important for Martin, particularly working with such fine musicians and he feels that this has made him a better player.

Despite the Italian connections, his career is London-based and the sheer variety of music-making in London attracts him. For a while, he was the horn player for Strictly Come Dancing. He describes this as a very different work, but full of incredible musicians and it was awe-inspiring watching them work like that with Martin trying to keep up. He particularly mentions Dave Arch who conducted and arranged for the show as well as playing different instruments. All on live television too.

He feels lucky that musical life in London is, at the moment, still vibrant. He points to Cardiff, where his wife is a violinist with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and how the city is losing so much of its musical infrastructure and he feels that it is important to leave a legacy of fighting for live music.

Martin Owen, Manchester Camerata, Gábor Takács-Nagy at the Stoller Hall (Photo; Rob Everett)

His first musical experience was as a street urchin in Kent Opera‘s production of Bizet’s Carmen. His parents were not musicians, his father was a teacher, but they listened to a lot of music. There was a lot of Russian music at home, partly because his parents had met in the South Croydon Communist Party. His mother had spent a lot of time in Bulgaria as a young woman because her mother taught English there. Some 20 years ago, Martin was working in Bulgaria on a project for the British Council and was surprised to find quite how well-known his grandmother was.