Absrm Trumpet

During the second half of the 19th century, a French school of trumpet playing was established, with French musicians and composers at the forefront of the instrument’s musical and technical development. As a result, it was entrusted with a more prominent role within the orchestra and soon also as a solo instrument. On the present disc, Håkan Hardenberger – who like so many other leading trumpet players studied in Paris – presents some of the fruits of this development: five important French works composed between 1944 and 1977. With the support of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Fabien Gabel – who incidentally began his career as a trumpet player – he opens the disc with Henri Tomasi’s Trumpet Concerto. Often performed and recorded, it here appears on disc for the first time with its original, longer ending, reconstructed from a newly discovered manuscript.

Matilda Lloyd is a fast-rising star of the trumpet world, having won the BBC Young Musician of the year Brass Final as well as the Eric Aubier International Trumpet Competition, and having made an impressive solo debut at the BBC Proms. Matilda's debut album reflects her desire to broaden the trumpet repertoire, with no fewer than three works recorded for the first time, by composers Giles Swayne, Deborah Pritchard and Alex Woolf. Also included on the recording are forgotten works of the 20th and 21st centuries by Jacques Castérède and Raymond Gallois Montbrun alongside staples of the trumpet repertoire, such as Enescu's Légende and Peter Maxwell Davies's impressive showpiece, Sonata for Trumpet and Piano Op.1.

This complete recording of the trumpet concertos of German High Baroque composer Johann Melchior Molter actually includes the concertos in which the trumpet plays any role at all, and this is its biggest strength. Sample some of the concertos on the second CD, such as the Sonata Grossa for three trumpets, two oboes, timpani, strings, and continuo, or either of the works designated as a sinfonia concertante – the trumpet is not the first work one would associate with that elegant French form and its genteel conversations among a group of solo instruments, but Molter's command of instrumental textures is most unusual for his era.

Alison Balsom’s fourth CD for EMI Classics features Franz Joseph Haydn and Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s evergreen trumpet concertos, coupled with concertos by Johann Baptist Georg Neruda and Giuseppe Torelli. Balsom also directs Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

Baroque works for oboe have long been fertile ground for transcription to the trumpet and there are several examples here of this refashioning. The sequence of concertos and sonatas include examples from Handel’s Italian years, and from Johann Gottfried Stölzel, who was strongly influenced by Vivaldi. Telemann’s marvellously inventive Concerto in D major is performed on the modern flugelhorn. In addition, there is the only known surviving work from Johann Michael Fasch, younger brother of the more famous Johann Friedrich.