Esa-Pekka Salonen: When I was asked to write a piece for solo horn for the Holger Fransman Memorial Competition I agreed right away. I decided to write my own Concert Etude and thus create a little homage to my teacher who infact was like a grandfather to me. In this piece I treat the horn as a virtuoso instrument capable of acrobatics as well as the idiomatic melodic expression. In a way I wrote the piece for the great horn player I never became.