Haydn & Hummel - Trumpet Concertos - Warner Classics: 2162130 - CD or download

Listen on Presto Music. Free thirty day trial. Find out more.

Balsom plays them all with great virtuosity, varied toned and good style. The German Chamber Philharmonic provides spirited, carefully detailed support. — BBC Music Magazine, October 2008, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 1st Sep 2008
Catalogue No: 2162130
Label: Warner Classics
Length: 52 minutes

In stock

Usually despatched within 1 working day

Hummel, J: Trumpet Concerto in E (or E flat) major, WoO / S49

Work length17:49

$3.90

$5.10

$5.85

Alison Balsom (trumpet), Thomas Klug (orchestra leader)
Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

I. Allegro con spirito

Track length9:24

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

II. Andante

Track length4:45

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

III. Rondo

Track length3:40

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E flat major, Hob. VIIe:1

Work length14:43

$3.90

$5.10

$5.85

Alison Balsom (trumpet)
Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen
Thomas Klug

I. Allegro

Track length6:37

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

II. Andante

Track length3:31

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

III. Finale - Allegro: I. Allegro con spirito

Track length4:35

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

Torelli: Trumpet Concerto in D

Work length5:51

$3.90

$5.10

$5.85

Alison Balsom (trumpet), Thomas Klug (orchestra leader)
Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

I. Allegro

Track length2:00

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

II. Adagio - Presto - Allegro

Track length2:18

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

III. Allegro

Track length1:33

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

Neruda, J B G: Trumpet Concerto in E flat major

Work length14:20

$3.90

$5.10

$5.85

Alison Balsom (trumpet), Thomas Klug (orchestra leader)
Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

I. Allegro

Track length5:13

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

II. Largo

Track length4:34

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

III. Vivace

Track length4:33

$1.30

$1.70

$1.95

About
Reviews
Explore

About

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.

The Haydn Trumpet Concerto is arguably the most popular work for the instrument as well as one of the composer’s best known compositions, a favourite of performers and audiences alike for its wonderful melodic invention and challenging virtuosity. Reviewing Alison’s performance with the Milwaukee Symphony in March of this year, the Journal Sentinel wrote, “Alison Balsom's details of attack, release, dynamics and timbre polished Haydn's … Trumpet Concerto into an exquisite little gem. …This concerto … has its moments of brilliant bugling. More often, though, it [shows the short-lived keyed trumpet] capable of a refined sort of expression …. Balsom excelled at both facets of the concerto. She snapped off staccato 16ths with ease and signal calls with clarion purity and power. And she shaped and colored Haydn's gentle, lyrical lines with the grace and warmth of a really good Mozartean mezzo.”

Jonathan Freeman-Attwood’s CD booklet note describes the notoriously-difficult-to-play ‘natural’ trumpet of the Renaissance and Baroque periods and the development of the ‘keyed’ trumpet by the Viennese court trumpeter Anton Weidinger in the 1790s, which inspired the concerto masterpieces by Haydn and Hummel performed on this disc.

The enticing melodic possibilities of Weidinger’s “keyed” trumpet, and indeed the artistry of Weidinger himself, moved Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), then at the height of his powers, to compose his concerto in E-flat for trumpet & orchestra. His last purely orchestral work, the concerto is a “gloriously ebullient and concise masterpiece in which the composer […] conceives a highly distinctive palette to thrust the trumpet into a brave new world.” Interestingly, it was not premiered until 1800, four years after its completion, possibly because Weidinger needed time to master its technical challenges.

Also composed for Weidinger was the Concerto in E Major (often performed, as here, in E-flat) by Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837), prodigy, student of Mozart and, later, of Haydn. Hummel composed his trumpet concerto in 1803 and Weidinger premiered it the following year for members of the Esterházy court. The composer was subsequently appointed music director there, on Haydn’s recommendation and likely helped by the success of his trumpet concerto. The concerto, “a more expansive work [than Haydn’s, takes the modified trumpet] a stage further in variety of idiomatic figuration and harmonic adventure.”

The Concerto in D by Giuseppe Torelli (1658-1709) was composed for the “natural” trumpet and likely performed on feast days in the San Petronio Basilica. The concerto for hunting horn and strings in E-flat by the Czech composer Johann Baptist Neruda (c1707-c1780) was probably written in the 1760s and is an example of a charming, traditional work of its era.

Reviews

October 2008

Balsom plays them all with great virtuosity, varied toned and good style. The German Chamber Philharmonic provides spirited, carefully detailed support.

Occasionally a player comes along who turns all the preconceived ideas about their instrument on their head, and reinvents the repertoire. … Alison Balsom is a virtuoso player and a natural, gifted communicator, but what really comes across is her sheer exuberance and joy in making music.

December 2010

The first movement of the Haydn is a model of concision which Balsom plays gloriously

2010

Haydn and Hummel composed their concertos for Anton Weidinger's newfangled keyed trumpet, whose timbre was appreciably softer than the natural trumpet (contemporaries likened it to an oboe or clarinet). More than any performance, Alison Balsom brings out the mellow, even veiled, colouring of so much of the writing.
Where clarion brilliance is in order she can peal out with the best of them. But what lingers in the memory is the lyrical grace of her phrasing, and her delicacy of shading.
In the entertaining Hummel Concerto, with its palpable Mozart cribs, she mingles tonal subtlety and swagger in the opening movement, spins a refined, beautifully modulated line in the slow movement, and makes the finale's pyrotechnics properly dazzling. The spruce Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie match her all the way in sensitivity and rhythmic verve.
Moving back in time, Balsom savours the bold, bugling fanfares of Torelli's miniature concerto and makes a persuasive case for a pleasant, if hardly distinctive, mid-18th-century concerto by the Czech Johann Baptist Neruda, written for the corno da caccia but forgivably pilfered by trumpeters hard-up for solo concertos. In sum, a stunning recital from a poet of this traditionally martial instrument.

Awards Issue 2008

…a stunning recital from a poet of this traditionally martial instrument.

Haydn & Hummel - Trumpet Concertos

CD

Downloads

Contents

Download queue