A chat with Carolyn Kunicki on all things french horn and Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony

• Interview with carolyn kunicki, horn player

• About carolyn

• About tchaikovsky and Symphony no 4

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Carolyn and her horn, outside where her mother told her to be with that thing.

Interview with horn player Carolyn Kunicki! 

I chatted with Carolyn about the french horn and Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony.

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about carolyn

Carolyn Kunicki (she/her) is a native of Pennsylvania. She showed an interested in music at an early age playing the family piano and her father’s old boy scout bugle which often led to her and the bugle being sent outside. At age nine she started studying the French horn mostly due to her mother telling her she thought it sounded pretty and a strong desire to play something loud. She was accepted to the Julliard School when she was 16.

Her Studies with Julie Landsman (retired principal horn of the Metropolitan Opera) led her to winning the Juilliard Strauss Horn Concerto competition, the Aspen Music Festival Fellowship Award, and the Aspen Wind Solo Competition as well as cultivating a love for the operatic repertoire. Carolyn spent many evenings attending the Metropolitan Opera during her schooling. Carolyn earned a position in the Colorado Symphony horn section through a national audition at the age of twenty-one! She is currently 2nd/utility Horn for the Colorado Symphony and also serves as Principal (1st) Horn for Central City Opera during the summer.

Carolyn has a passion for educational outreach and plays and narrates stories with music throughout the Denver Public School system. When not playing horn she is often visiting the Denver Art Museum, Denver Zoo, and Denver Museum of Science with her two teenage daughters. She enjoys biking, hiking, crossfit, and stealth power-napping. :) 

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About Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and 

Symphony No. 4

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic era.  In addition to his 6 symphonies, he wrote some of the most popular music in the long form acoustic music repertoire.  Despite his international acclaim, Tchaikovsky endured many points of personal crises and depression. He was deeply shaken by the untimely deaths of his mother and later of a close friend and colleague, left financially bereft by the collapse of his 13 year association with a commissioning patron, and increasingly anxious about being unable to be openly queer in a deeply intolerant society.  There is something universal in the emotional heft of Tchaikovsky’s expressions which resonates with anyone who struggles with their human flaws, whether perceived or real.

Tchaikovsky completed Symphony No. 4 in F minor in 1878 when he was just 38 years old.  It carries the nickname “Fate” Symphony based on notes Tchaikovsky made about the primary theme of the first movement.

In a letter to his sponsoring patron, Tchaikovsky wrote “the fanfare first heard at the opening is the kernel, the quintessence, the chief thought of the whole symphony and stands for Fate, specifically the fatal power which prevents one from attaining the goal of happiness. There is nothing to be done but to submit to it and lament in vain.”  He continued to explain that the meaning of the first movement is basically that "all life is an unbroken alternation of hard reality with swiftly passing dreams and visions of happiness  where no haven exists. Drift upon that sea until it engulfs and submerges you in its depths.”

Sounds like he needed one of Carolyn's power-naps... and maybe some chocolate. 🫣 

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