The Hornroh Modern Alphorn Quartet was formed during the summer of 2000 when four professional players from Basel were engaged to perform at the Munich Opera Festival. Its aim is to combine traditional music for alphorn with modern, contemporary thinking and playing.
Since its foundation, the ensemble has performed its own pieces and improvisations, commissioned new compositions, developed instruments, and devised innovative stagings, all of which have coaxed archaic energy, harmonic diversity and filigree sound-painting from the Swiss cult instrument. This has led to diverse productions such as the CDs zirp (2002), findling (2009), gletsc (2015) and Eigenbräu (2021), the programmes hornroh inszeniert (2003), Hautmusik (2008) and hornOXER (2012), and the world premiere of the concerto grosso No. 1 by Georg Friedrich Haas with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The ensemble has also collaborated in co-productions with Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), the Munich Chamber Orchestra and the 2009 Lucerne Festival, and worked with Wien Modern and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the SWR Symphony Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
With its diverse range of instruments (alphorns, Büchel, Alpofone Meerschnecken and animal horns) plus singer (Jennifer Tauder) the Quartet also gives staged performances, and develops programmes tailor-made for special concert venues. The ensemble is characterized not least by its fascination with instruments that are exotic in the normal concert repertoire.
