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

One rusty instrument, twelve impossible months, and the mad quest to master the orchestra's most treacherous brass. 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. Music Memoirs: Rees embarks on his year-long obsession after impulsively joining seventy horn players in Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus at the British Horn Society annual gathering. History of Music: Deep instrumental lore is woven throughout, tracing the horn from prehistoric rams' horns and Roman battlefield signals to the colourful exploits of Mozart's favorite hornist, Joseph Leutgeb. Raw Honesty: From conquering Farkas warm-ups in a derelict West End office to suffering lip fatigue in front of critical players at a New Hampshire camp, every humiliating technical failure is laid bare. Against the Odds: Armed with a student-grade Czechoslovakian instrument, Rees faces down sheer performance panic before the world's elite brass players at London's Guildhall School of Music.…