Barry Tuckwell, considered by many to be the finest horn player of his generation, who displayed his skill in concerts all over the world and on dozens of recordings, died Friday in Melbourne, Australia. He was 88.
The Maryland Symphony Orchestra, of which Tuckwell was founding music director and conductor, posted news of his death on its website. The Sydney Morning Herald of Australia said the cause was heart disease.
Tuckwell, Australian by birth, was a master of the French horn, one of the more difficult instruments in the orchestra to play well, especially as a soloist.
Tuckwell offered an analogy. "Playing the horn," he told People magazine, "is like driving a very fast car on an oily road. You have to anticipate the things that may go wrong."
Tuckwell took up the instrument as a teenager and became principal horn of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1955. Thirteen years later he embarked on a solo career, a rare step for a horn player.
He quickly developed a reputation for both a rich tone and a dexterity with difficult passages. He also conducted, leading the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra of Australia in the early 1980s before spending 17 seasons leading the Maryland Symphony Orchestra.
"As the most recorded horn soloist of all time," the Maryland orchestra's executive director, Jonathan Parrish, said in the posting, "Tuckwell had a global impact on the world of horn playing and has inspired every generation of horn player for the past 70 years."
Barry Emmanuel Tuckwell was born March 5, 1931, in Melbourne. His father, Charles, was an organist, and his mother, Elizabeth (Norton) Tuckwell, played piano; his father and others in his extended family had perfect pitch, and so did he.
He tried his parents' instruments as well as violin before a friend introduced him to the French horn when he was 13.
"It was an important age to find something," he told People. "I was not bright academically, and I was on the verge of being a juvenile delinquent."
Two years later he was playing the instrument in the Melbourne Symphony. He also played with the Victoria and Sydney symphonies in Australia before moving to England, where he performed with the London Symphony.
In a 1997 interview with The Times, Tuckwell credited an unexpected source with his ability to give a musical phrase a pleasing turn and to make a simple melody interesting: jazz trombonist Tommy Dorsey.
"I played along with his records when I was a kid," he said. "I'm proud to say I took lessons from Tommy Dorsey."
Tuckwell recorded almost everything in the classical French horn repertoire and added to that repertoire by unearthing unknown or incomplete works for the horn, finishing those that needed finishing. But he also made efforts to push the French horn into the popular-music arena. In 1979 he and pianist Richard Rodney Bennett recorded "A Sure Thing: Music of Jerome Kern." In 1986 came "George Shearing and Barry Tuckwell Play the Music of Cole Porter."
Tuckwel retired from performing in 1997. His final program, played in Baltimore, included Oliver Knussen's Horn Concerto, which was specifically written for him.