A Devil to Play: One Man's Year-Long Quest to Master the Orchestra's Most Difficult Instrument - Softcover

Rees, Jasper

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061626627 ISBN 13: 9780061626623

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2019

Synopsis

A charming and deeply funny memoir of musical obsession, A Devil to Play is the story of Jasper Rees, a man who unearths his childhood French horn, and begins a quixotic but obsessively serious challenge: to play a Mozart concerto--alone--for a paying audience within one year's time. It's an endearing, inspiring tale of perseverance and achievement, relayed masterfully, one side-splittingly off-key note at a time.

About this title

Product Description:

Rare Book

From the Back Cover:

In the days before his fortieth birthday, London-based journalist Jasper Rees traded his pen for a French horn that had been gathering dust in the attic for more than twenty-two years and, on a lark, played it at the annual festival of the British Horn Society. Despite an embarrassingly poor performance, the experience inspired Rees to embark on a daunting, bizarre, and ultimately winning journey: to return to the festival in one year's time and play a Mozart concerto--solo--to a large paying audience.

A Devil to Play is the true story of an unlikely midlife crisis spent conquering eighteen feet of wrapped brass tubing widely regarded as the most difficult instrument in the world to master--an endearing, inspiring tale of perseverance and achievement, relayed masterfully, one side-splittingly off-key note at a time.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0061626627
• ISBN 13: 9780061626623
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336