The booklet notes sports promotional material
for White Line’s English Oboe and English Bassoon Concerto collections.
Each CD has what I take to be distinctive LNER poster art –
rolling, unspoiled acres with winding lanes, a cloistered church,
patchwork fields, or bucolic harbours. Our trumpet concerto
disc goes for winding river and sun-dappled downland. The church
even looks a little like the church at Falmer in the Downs where
your critic often finds himself with flask and sandwich, a large
O.S. map and a hernia.
Sun dapple and Norman
towers hardly begin to describe the contents of this disc however,
one of the hilarious highpoints of which is that arch-modernist
Iain Hamilton’s outrageous Harry James shtick. But let’s take
this quartet of contrasting works in the order in which they’re
presented.
John Carmichael,
Anglo-Australian, pupil of Arthur Benjamin (and similarly Anglo-Australian)
always writes elegantly crafted and warm music. He has essayed
some Iberian music before now and opens his concerto with some
portentous Spanishry and some full blooded march themes – but
the orchestration is effusive, ebullient and effortlessly ear
catching. His lento reprises the somewhat impressionist cast
with which the concerto began and there are some nocturnal harp
arpeggios but there’s also an especially delicious song at its
heart, played by the orchestra, which is worthy of Cole Porter.
The finale is all fresh air vivo, replete with cadenza and some
emphatic drama. This is a winning work, and it gives the soloist
plenty of opportunities for fugitive lyricism and assertive
panoply and gives the orchestra similar chances – no easy backdrops
for Carmichael.
Hamilton’s Concerto
is for “jazz trumpet” – what’s that? Is it shaped like Dizzy
Gillespie’s? Well, I think we know what he means. There are
four brief movements. In the first we get some blowsy Harry
James vibrato getting down with Stormy Weather, a tune
that runs like a spine throughout, and this is followed by an
Allegro with big band drumming, hints of Ziggy Elman, and chances
for the soloist to stick in a mute to add colour and different
timbres to the brew. The slow movement has a fine string cushion
and legato trumpet, stretching out, but also undercurrents of
unease. The finale gives us some show band, tempo halving, back
beat and a reprise of Stormy Weather (some kind of in
joke for the hard working soloist, one wonders?)
Immediate contrast
is provided by Boughton’s 1943 concerto with its quietly concentrated
focus and a noble, almost hymnal quality. Boughton shows clear
signs of his Elgarian heritage, most particularly in the Lento
espressivo, with its stalking basses evoking the nobilmente
tread of the introductory paragraphs of the First Symphony,
a motif that returns after more waywardly rhythmic material.
There’s a brief cadenza and a replenishing chorale-type ending,
transformed into newly efflorescent Romantic beneficence.
Finally there’s
the Concerto by Tony Hewitt-Jones and the most recent of the
quartet, dating as it does from 1986. Bustly and warm its string
tang comes via Britten’s Frank Bridge Variations
– confident and lissom writing, as well as fluency itself for
the solo trumpet. There are vague hints of VW and of Copland
in the Air but the more melancholy cast certainly owes its mordancy
to the more introverted moments in Britten’s great string work.
This is a bold, brassy and confident work and makes a good impression.
Fine performances
all round – Wallace, needless to say, can get around these works
with silken ease and has the stylistic chops to do a Harry James
as much as to burnish the Boughton. Simon Wright directs the
BBC Scottish with flair and energy – reflective generosity as
well.
Jonathan Woolf
see also Review
by Rob Barnett
BUY
NOW
John Wallace (trumpet)
