BOB WARD: Unlocking Music’s (and Life’s) Mysteries
“Not only is Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings one of the great pieces that the horn gets to play, it's also one of the great pieces of 20th century music.”
Bob Ward is featured in Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony 8 pm June 19, 20 and 21. Davies Symphony Hall 415-864-6000 sfsymphony.org
You know JS Bach, and perhaps a couple of his sons. But did you know that music was the Bach family business for over 300 years? Some people, it seems, are born with music in their veins. SFS principal horn player Bob Ward is not one of them.
“I'm a bit of a genealogist and there are 2000 people in my family tree,” Bob says; “none of them musicians.” You are probably thinking two things right now: first, “a bit of a genealogist” might be an understatement for someone who has researched 2000 members of his family tree. And second, where did his evident musical skill come from? “My dad,” he continues, “for reasons that are still unclear, was tapped – pun intended – to be a bugler in World War Two. He had no skill at it, but the sergeant said, you're the guy. So growing up there was this green battered bugle on the shelf, and even when I was very young I could play the bugle.”
Bob Ward soon learned that, with brass instruments, you make the same shape with your mouth to play all of them. So during a Try An Instrument Day in 5th grade, he recalls walking over to the brass table. “I picked up a French horn and played a scale the first time i touched it. The teacher said, looks like we have a natural here.”
Natural or not, mastering the horn required years of work. While studying in Oberlin (“thumbing through the card catalog,” he says, “back when there were still card catalogs”), Bob discovered the original 78rpm recording of Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings that the composer himself made with his partner, tenor Peter Pears, and the renowned British hornist Dennis Brain.“Brain died before I was born,” he points out. “But his recordings are legendary It was great to hear how he played the piece, so close to the premiere, and with Britten shaping the whole thing.”
The Serenade might seem like a rare moment in the spotlight for a horn player, but Bob maintains that “playing the world's great pieces, you will get great horn parts. Mahler's 5th Symphony, the 3rd movement, is practically a horn concerto. It's nice to play concertos – the Mozart, the Strauss – but I get plenty of exposure.”
The name Bob Ward may soon be getting some exposure in a different field.“I was in Boston doing genealogy,” he recalls, “resting in my hotel, and I just started writing a novel there. I've always been a voracious reader, but I’d never done anything like this.” He terms it a psychological thriller about a father who has the knowledge to clear up a family mystery – but who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. A daughter caught on the horns of a dilemma, a shifty pharmaceutical company, and a news reporter all play their parts, and 170,000 words later, Bob had finished a first draft. “Now it needs a bit of liposuction,” he laughs. He’s enjoyed the writing process, in part because “it's wonderfully unlike playing music.”
That sort of low-key warmth and even-keeled personality is something SFS fans have grown accustomed to. This is, after all, the man whose recorded “turn off your cell phone” announcement also gives you all the details about the liquid that horn players are sometimes seen shaking out of their instruments. Even when discussing his other passion – food – he refuses to get carried away. “I’m a ‘fishatarian’ so I look for places with good seafood and local produce,” he says. But he also admits it’s hard to do that on the road. He recalls being in a restaurant in Geneva. “They had one fish dish - sole - and it was 75 euros. I wasn't going to pay that.”
The prospect of playing the Britten Serenade, though, does get Bob excited.“Not only is it one of the great pieces that the horn gets to play, it's also one of the great pieces of 20th century music.”
