Jeff Garza has no need for a hammer. He could drive nails with his lips. The San Antonio Symphony's principal horn player since 2003, Garza delivered a show-off recital on Sunday for Camerata San Antonio in Travis Park United Methodist Church.
His stylish partner was pianist Vivienne Spy Petkovich.
The program skewed French, opening with Eug ne Bozza's En For t, composed as a test of virtuosic mettle. Garza passed, easily compassing the outer section's brilliant leaps and runs and the middle's broad lyricism.
The piece gives the piano a very nice solo in the slow section, presumably to give the hornist a short rest before scaling the final peak.
Jean Francaix's Divertimento of 1959 also demanded and received brilliance, especially in the jaunty finale, one of the composer's wittiest movements. A Berceuse, or lullaby, by Jean-Michel Damase offered iridescent modern harmonies and a vehicle for Garza's firmly supported low register.
Five songs by Gabriel Faur , in arrangements by Sterling Procter, proved well suited for the horn, though the horn was less well suited to the songs.
Faur 's melodies are shrink-wrapped around the French vowels and depend on a wide range of vocal colors to give them life. The horn, for all its beauty, can't approach the coloristic possibilities of the voice.
Still, Garza's beautifully shapely lines and rock-solid sustained notes were consistently pleasurable.
Garza brought total confidence and high polish to Beethoven's early Horn Sonata, with a particularly authoritative contribution from Petkovich, and Jan Koetsier's heroic, almost operatic Scherzo Brillante.
The closer was a spirited account of American composer Alec Wilder's Horn Sonata No.
3, most notable for its jazzy third movement.
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