“You, God of horn!” A Japanese fan approached Tuckwell after a concert with this apt appellation and the words stuck, Barry wryly tweaking his personal email to include the letters "GoH."

The Australian horn legend Barry Tuckwell AC, OBE died on 16 January 2020 at the age of 88. One of the great horn virtuosi of the second half of the 20th century, he was also a conductor and teacher who worked all over the world. Tuckwell also authored two important books on the techniques of horn playing and commissioned a wealth of new repertoire for the instrument.

Born in Melbourne in 1931 into a musical family, his father Charles played the mighty Wurlitzer organ in the local movie palace. After the family moved to Sydney, Barry studied piano, violin and organ and was a chorister at St. Andrew’s Cathedral School.

In an interview Barry told me he felt unfulfilled as a boy. “I was not very good at the piano or organ and very inept on the violin.

So when the horn arrived at a pivotal moment in my life I found something I could do, and it was a love affair from the start.”

He was 13.

Later on in life, Tuckwell used his characteristic wit to describe how the horn had chosen him: "One note at a time, piece of cake!" The horn is one of the most treacherous instruments to master.

It was a love affair backed up with a lot of hard work. Two years later at the age of 15, Tuckwell was appointed third horn with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and soon after won the post of principal with the Sydney Symphony. Surprisingly, a big influence on his playing style was jazz trombonist Tommy Dorsey. “My hero! A master at phrasing, breathing and tonal control, he showed me how to play melodies on a brass instrument, and play them in a truly vocal style.”

His earliest memories of horn playing were recordings of Aubrey Brain playing Mozart’s third concerto and the Brahms Trio. “I loved Dennis Brain’s Mozart 4, Strauss 1 and the Britten Serenade too. Later on I loved Gottfried von Freiburg of the Vienna Philharmonic – the most beautiful horn sound I ever heard.” (When British virtuoso Dennis Brain was tragically killed in a car accident in 1957, Tuckwell inherited his mantle.)

Barry Tuckwell interviewed by Margaret Throsby Margaret Throsby discusses life and music with one of Australia's greatest French horn players.

Barry always paid tribute to Alan Mann, his horn teacher at the Sydney Conservatorium whom he worked alongside at the SSO from 1947 to 1950. “The SSO’s horn section then was very young. Except for Alan Mann, we were all under 20!”

Still under 20, Tuckwell’s career blossomed after he moved to the UK, becoming Assistant First Horn in Sir John Barbirolli’s Halle Orchestra in Manchester. Positions followed in quick succession with the Scottish and Bournemouth orchestras, before he was appointed Principal Horn with the London Symphony Orchestra at the age of 24, where he stayed for 13 years. The players elected him to the Board of Directors and ultimately he was appointed LSO Chairman.

“They were exciting times. We were brave, young, and ambitious to make the orchestra the best possible. And we chose repertoire that we played better than the RPO under Beecham, and the Philharmonia under Herbert von Karajan! We excelled in Stravinsky and Berlioz whereas the other orchestras were better at Mozart and Beethoven than we were.”

In 1968 Tuckwell resigned his “killing schedule with the LSO”, to pursue his increasingly busy career as a horn soloist. Olli Knussen, Thea Musgrave, Gunther Schuller, Robin Holloway, Don Banks and Richard Rodney Bennett are amongst the many composers who wrote new works for him. “The Knussen is the most personal and it’s biographical. The final row of notes is in a form of my name. I knew Ollie when he was a baby, so I’m ‘Uncle Barry’ with him.”

That concerto was the last one he played in 1997 at his farewell concert with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

But Tuckwell quickly reinvented himself as a conductor taking guidance from Sir Adrian Boult and later Lorin Maazel. He’d also witnessed a myriad of different conducting styles playing under a succession of great chief conductors with the LSO: Josef Krips, Pierre Monteux, Istvan Kertesz and countless guest conductors. “The greatest manipulator of orchestral sound then and up to this day was Leopold Stokowski. He was a genius and something of a magician.”

Tuckwell was appointed Chief Conductor of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra for four seasons from 1980, and in 1982 founded the Maryland Symphony Orchestra in the US.

Vale Barry Tuckwell AC, OBE 5 March 1931 to 16 January 2020

Barry Tuckwell is the most recorded horn player, leaving behind over 50 recordings, amongst them three Grammy nominations. “I loved the art. To my mind it requires a completely different approach from playing at a concert, in the same way as the actor playing a part on stage has to have a different technique in the film studio. A successful recording artist must have the ability to relive the emotion of a phrase played independently from the rest of the work.”

Tuckwell’s trademark lyrical line, and the supreme ease with which he tackled some of the most difficult music in the horn repertoire, made his recordings much loved classics.

When I interviewed the always straight-talking "God of Horn" in 2007, he’d just commemorated the 50th anniversary of Dennis Brain’s death, conducting two concerts in London with members of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s horn section. I asked Barry how he’d like to be remembered:

“If one tried to lead one’s life thinking of being remembered one will become narcissistic. I never ever think that way. I couldn’t care less what my epitaph might be.”

If only he was able to read the outpouring of accolades and tributes from former students, colleagues and admirers this week.

Mairi Nicolson presents Lunchtime Concert, The Opera Show and Sunday Opera on ABC Classic.