Emma Eden Photo: Supplied
Emma Eden needed a bit of persuading to take up the French horn.
Her first instrumental love was the tenorhorn, that staple of brass band music that resembles a miniature tuba.
A tenor horn is little like a pint-sized version of this. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Eden got the brass bug as a member of Timaru's Waimataitai band lead by the charismatic David Woolf - world famous (at least for brass musicians) in South Canterbury.
Eden excelled as a musician but when she enrolled at the Wellington School of Music her tutors suggested she might do better in the classical music world if she adopted a different instrument.
At first the Cantabrian resisted the idea, but Heather Thompson, French horn teacher and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra member, turned Eden around.
This Friday, Eden will perform one of the pinnacles of the French horn repertoire when she plays Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and tenor Jordan Fonoti-Fuimaono.
Eden spoke to RNZ Concert's Bryan Crump ahead of the gig - he was at pains to point out to listeners the work is for horn, a tenor and strings, not a 'tenor horn' and string.
Eden approves of his efforts to avoid confusion. But while she revels in the work playing the French horn has brought her, she's kept her down-to-earth attitude to making music - something which perhaps goes back to her days with the Waimataitai School Brass Band.
In her orchestral career, which started with Orchestra Wellington and took her to the CSO via the Auckland Philharmonia, Eden has excelled not just as a player, but also as a communicator, able to bring the joy and wonder of classical music to a wider audience.
Emma Eden: keeping classical music real. Photo: Popup Workshop/RNZ
The support of her family has also been key. Eden tells Crump while her Mum and Dad weren't musical, they supported her music career all the way. They came to her concerts because they loved her, but grew to love the music too.
Eden now has a family of her own, two children that she's bringing up with wife Liz.
They are sure to be at her concert at The Piano this Friday.
It's the second time Eden has taken on Britten's Serenade; a masterpiece not just for the way the English composer writes for the French horn, but how he uses the English language, with settings of poems by Tennyson, Blake and Keats, among others.
In the final song, Eden will have to leave the auditorium as the composer asks the French horn for finish the work offstage.
Eden remembers her first backstage performance well. She came across a woman a little lost, and looking for the toilet. The woman was keen for conversation, while Eden was trying to focus on her music.
Hopefully Eden will have the backstage area to herself this time.
