Posted by Mary Ann on June 09, 2003 at 09:52:47:
I just got back from the week-long International Horn Symposium in Bloomington, Indiana. guess what? there were two pieces performed with Dan Perantoni on tuba!! Wowza!! Harvey Phillips was also there. For the first one, I was way back in the auditorium and couldn't tell what kind of tuba he was playing, but for the second one, I was up close and could see it was an F. A large F, but an F. I assume (?) an Perantucci F. Now, this man gets a wonderful sound out of that F tuba. A sound to remember and strive for. Proof, if any was needed, that a rotary F tuba can produce a solid low range that sounds just as good as the rest of the range.
There was also a talk by Gerhard Meinl about instrument making. He commented that in trumpets, a rotary trumpet has a much shorter leadpipe than a piston trumpet, because for the rotary the leadpipe goes in the "front side" of the valves, while for the piston, the leadpipe goes in the "back side" of the valves. He said that because of the very short leadpipe on the rotary trumpet, the back reflection to the lips was faster and more noticible, making it more difficult to play. I asked him if the problem with F tubas and the low C was due to the short lead pipe, but he did not answer my question. Instead, he said something along the lines of "You Americans expect an F tuba to play like a C tuba." I was disappointed with that response....if it is as simple as which end of the valves the leadpipe enters, then someone ought to be able to fix it, theoretically. In any case it was an interesting talk, delivered from a European point of view.
MA