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Is that a BBb or CC? Regardless, spectacular I think he did an excellent job filling in for Brandströtter that year.

Hello Doc,

thank you for posting this. Albert sounds great as always!

Regarding Bohland & Fuchs, they made many CC tubas especially in the 4/4 size. Quite a few were exported to Spain and Portugal. They are generally quite nice tubas, having a significantly deeper bass voice than many modern 4/4 tubas. CC tubas were quite common in Germany before WW2 especially in the south near to Austria, in fact before ca.1900 its possible there were more CC-Tubas in Bavaria than BBb tubas!

The tuba Albert is using is a post WW2 B&F made in the Amati factory. These tubas feature a different construction technique compared to the pre war Bohlands and although they sound great, are quite different to play than the pre 1940s B&Fs. While the Melton/MW 197 is a nice tuba, it has little to do with either of these horns. Both are larger than a 197 and considerably lighter.

Have a good weekend everyone!
TheBerlinerTuba

Interesting! For reference on the particular tuba in question, there's a pretty good shot of the valve combinations at :49 in the first video, chromatic up from C, confirming BBb I believe.

I generally think the Kaiser sound is a bit heavy-handed for Mnozil, but it does sound quite nice in that clip, especially at the end.

bort wrote:the Kaiser sound is a bit heavy-handed for Mnozil,

That is exactly what I thought when I heard him in Mnozil Brass. He is unquestionably a fine player but the sound was just too "fat-sounding" for me. Even with the rather large F that Mr. Brandstötter uses the sound seemed much more "crisp". All of the other similar groups (septets) like Viera Blech, Alpenblech, Blaskapelle Gloria, etc use an F bass tuba. Even the British group Septura uses and Eb I believe. Bass tuba just seems to work much better with that size group, at least to my ears. Oddly though, I really liked the duets in the OP with that large tuba and flügelhorn...just my $.02

Pete

The B&F may be "too big" for some of the selections, but for "Bohemian Rhapsody," I thought it was perfect, to emulate John Deacon's big round Precision Bass tone. For everyone else, there is a concert band arrangement of Bohemian Rhapsody that is actually in the correct key (Eb) and pretty much follows the record. The only issue I have with the concert band arrangement is that the heavy bass line that starts at 3:52 in the Mnozil video is oversimplified, but if you have only one tuba in a small band you can play "the record" version, as Wilfried Brandstötter played, and it fits.

For comparison, the original video, to show how well Mnozil interpreted the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ" target="_blank

nworbekim wrote:i love it... when i grow up, i hope to play like that guy does...

i especially like the pachebel... is there a hardcopy of that published?

Well, there's this:

I wondered the same. Clap? Stomp?
BTW, the newest MS version is pretty much bug-free--finally.