SOVIET TRUMPET CONCERTOS
ALEXANDER ARUTYUNYAN (b. 1920)
Trumpet Concerto (1950)
Variations for trumpet and
orchestra
ALEXANDRA PAKHMUTOVA (b.1929)
Trumpet Concerto
(1955)
MOISEI VAINBERG
Trumpet Concerto
(1967)
Bibi Black (trumpet)
Moscow Chamber Orchestra/Constantine
Orbelian
CHANDOS CHAN 9668
[72.05]
Crotchet
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Here are four works for trumpet and orchestra all from the pre-Perestroika
USSR.
The Arutyunian is a singularly attractive work dating from 1950. It is brilliant
(as you would expect), languorously suggestive of warm summer nights in the
Caucasus and, in places, a hair's breadth from Gershwin's blues. Those of
you who may have heard the violin concerto this is a much more attractive
work given a strapping performance and vivid recording. The big theme struts
like a toreador.
The Variations are as strikingly memorable - a warm steady flow of
orientally-accented lyricism alternates with ripe and pert virtuosity. There
is none of the hieratic minimalism we get from Hovhaness whenever he is put
near an orchestra and a trumpet. Philip Taylor's lucid and informative notes
suggest parallels with Kabalevsky.
The Pakhmutova concerto is bright, eager, imaginative and not a moment too
long.
Vainberg's concerto is again a work of technical challenge. It is more
modernistic than the Arutyunian; rather like a Malcolm Arnold concerto but
with a higher dosage of dissonance (nothing to frighten anyone off but noticeable
all the same).
All the usual high production values from Chandos.
Reviewer
Rob Barnett
