Mollenhauer Vs. Fox - The Beethoven 5 challenge

I played Beethoven 5 on contrabassoon this past week here in the RSO and had the rare opportunity to play it in rehearsal and on the first of two performances on my usual pre-war (WW II for those who aren't familiar with bassoon terminology) Mollenhauer contra and the second performance on the Fox contra that I borrow for extended periods of time from probably the most generous person I know of, at least in terms of kindness in knowing and understanding my needs with regards to a good axe to use. I won my current job on this Fox and know it very well but it has been quite a few months since I last played it. I'm smart enough by now to know that the two instruments require different reeds and I always set the Fox reeds aside for when I'm playing it and the Mollenhauer reeds sit in my humidifier ready to go when I use it. Anyway, as this was the tenth or fifteenth time I've played the challenging contra part for the Beethoven I thought I'd use this opportunity to really dig down and see which of these instruments fit me best and why. Now that the killer long weekend is over (I played my own transcription of the flute part of Ich folge dir gleichfalls from "St. John Passion" by J.S. Bach yesterday morning with my beautiful Heather singing the soprano part - we used a muted organ for the orchestra transcription, it came off very well) I thought I'd jot down some preliminary thoughts for anyone who might find this and be interested. I'll probably add more to this soon as I'm getting ready to buy either a new Fox or a new Mollenhauer (unless I can find a great used axe), maybe by the end of the year.

The Mollenhauer is not in great shape. I leaks quite a bit at the joints and is actually padded, mostly, in very well-sealed brown leather sax pads. It has a terrible three-finger C, in both octaves - it is VERY flat, and the C# suffers because of this. I get around this by fingering the C with the right third finger down on the low G and often by opening the right little-finger G# (it doesn't have a thumb G#). This helps but I still have to coax the pitch upward. The C# _requires_ the right thumb Bb and the little-finger G# or it will simply not reach the pitch. As the horn is tuned to 437.5Hz I end up playing the short bocal (there is no number on it, but it must be a #1) and have the tuning slide all the way in, always. It has no alternate C# or top vent in the left thumb, but it doesn't really need it because it really plays quite well up there. G#s, As, and even Bs are are no problem - this makes Mother Goose pretty easy. It also _never_ cracks the F#s and Gs at the top of the bass clef. Both of the bottom As are very sharp which causes a bit of adjustment when moving rapidly back and forth to my Heckel bassoon (12736) because it sits just a little low on those As. Nothing bad, but it is worth noting especially as I've been using a goblet-shape for my bassoon reeds mostly which brings that upper octave a little lower than I'd otherwise like. All of this aside, this is a very clean sounding axe. It is smooth and has a lot of color in the sound (minus the Cs and C#s which lose a bit of this from being lifted so much for pitch).

This Fox is typically Fox. Great key placement (though it, too, is missing the right-thumb G#, why in the hell isn't this standard on contras?) and the pitch is overall very even. The Gs and F#s like to crack a bit, especiall at mf and above and I need to be careful of my lip placement on the wider Rieger K1 shape I usually use. The low register is a bit stuffy and I don't think it is due to pad or joint leakage. This horn has my ideal left thumb arrangement with the rare extra C# key above/between the top two vents. I always bend this up a bit when I get it and actually end up using that C# as my primary as it makes the movements in Brahms 1 and 3 very easy. The upper register is far more resistant than the Mollenhauer but the middle register is easier. Go figure. The sound, though, is nice but there seems to be a lack of available color for me to move around in, especially when compared to the Mollenhauer. I need to play around with the reeds a bit. The Nielubowski shape I've got seems to help this horn a lot but as I usually buy my contra reeds (and increasingly my bassoon reeds) from ProReeds (and, I'll soon make the decision on this, perhaps from Hans Wisse in Rotterdam) in Munich this means that I may have to break out the tools and make some of my own. I am very good at this, not to ring my own bell, but I just find, as most of my friends in Europe do also, that I can really make a lot more progress by having these other excellent reed makers do that job for me.

So, the Beethoven challenge results: The Fox was much better overall and the opening eighth notes (E, F, E, D, low C) at the beginning of the last movement really popped out. The arpeggios to high G, though, spoke much more cleanly on the Mollenhauer and I was able to better blend with the basses on the held Gs as well as the statement of the various themes that we have in unison. We did this in chamber orchestra seating which meant that there were only two basses with me so I could really play out. The extra color in the Mollenhauer let me do this without needing to be buzz-careful, something that I cannot stand. The Fox's better C and C# pitches made blending with the 2nd bassoon much easier in those octave eighth notes in the middle of the movement and I think Marty was happier with this than he was/is on the Mollenhauer. In the end, though, I think a more modern Mollenhauer, one with some voicing/tone hole work, might be the best choice for this.

We'll see. I'm about to call the US Mollenhauer rep and get price/delivery info as I have this already on the Fox.

Anyway, next week is Shosty 5 and those solos. I think I'll do it all on the Fox and see how that comes out.