Tooting His Horn

Approaching the end of Mozart’s famous 23rd Piano Concerto in Orange County on April 25, soloist Robert Thies, playing with the Mozart Camerata, got lost--for the third time. He improvised the rest of the way--a fact clearly and inarguably recorded on the tape of the concert.

Susan Bliss, reviewing for The Times, called his playing “clean,” (“Prokofiev Winner Offers Unerring Mozart,” Calendar, April 30) apparently because she did not know that these notes were not Mozart’s.

An example of the problems caused by Thies’ improvisation occurred in the slow movement, when he abruptly scrambled to a cadence far ahead of the orchestra, in turn making an accurate horn resolution sound like a wrong pitch.

Bliss evidently assumed the horns were responsible for what must have sounded very odd. She was, in fact, so certain of the horns’ guilt she wrote that “horns cracked and missed pitches in key entrances, with a particularly frustrating bungle following . . . the pianist’s Adagio.”

The truth is, the concert tape reveals the horns making but one brief slide into a note and a rougher-than-desired slur. One and a half blemishes, not the many implied by her use of plurals.

If she had not written my name, I would have laughed it off as just another uninformed review. But she was so annoyed she mentioned me (and my colleague) later: “. . . hornists Paul Stevens and Linda Duffin redeemed themselves for previous indiscretions. . . .”

Bliss’ credibility is in serious question due to her seeming unfamiliarity with one of the best-known pieces in Western music. And because a freelance musician is only considered as good as his last performance, such falsehood and overstatement are deadly to my ability to make a living.

PAUL STEVENS

Tujunga