OT: What is this instrument?

[Hector Pascal]

Hi all,
Wishing everyone on the forum a happy new year
Cheers,
Hector.
PS: I was just watching the 2023 Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Concert and saw this instrument and am not sure what it is.
It was played at the end of Carl Michael Ziehrer's "In lauschiger Nacht" (On a Cozy Night), Waltz, Op. 488.

[N Grossingink]

It's a Posthorn. Also used in Mozart's Posthorn Serenade and Mahler's 3rd Symphony, among others.

[Hector Pascal]

Thanks, N! I like the sound of the instrument
Cheers,
Hector.

[ebiggs1]

It is also quite different as are all horns of modern design. They originally, the post horn or hunting horn, was a single horn without valves. The post horn as it was called was used to signal the arrival of the mail or "post" as they called it.

[Bill Stevens]

Nowadays who would play posthorn? The French Horn player? Trumpet?

I took a temporary trip down the posthorn rabbit hole and found that there is a posthorn symbol in Unicode at U+1F4EF.

::: Bill

[motet]

Trumpet player.

[David Ward]

OT (even more): in 1952, aged 12, I was taken sitting on top of a coach & four (horses) the 14 miles from Wisbech to Kings Lynn. Next to the coachman his colleague had a long, straight posthorn without valves on which he played traditional calls as we approached each inn along the road. People came out to cheer us on our way. There was nothing like as much traffic on the main road in those days. I suspect it would be close to impossible nowadays. I can't remember what was behind this exercise in nostalgia, driving a horse-drawn vehicle along a motor road, but I still remember the trip vividly.

BTW ‘post’ is still probably the more usual word in most of the UK rather than ‘mail’.