Search - Benedetto Marcello, Giuseppe Torelli, Georg Philipp Telemann :: Famous Trumpet Concerti

A bargain if you enjoy modern trumpet and reworked music

Leslie Richford | Selsingen, Lower Saxony | 03/13/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Recorded in January 1989, this Naxos CD has a good deal of charm (and caused my dear wife to call out to me recently while I was listening to it, ?What lovely music!?). Of course, this is not historical performance practice and these are not period instruments. But if you enjoy a modern trumpet, here played quite exquisitely by Miroslav Kejmar of the Czech Philharmonic, and you can cope with the fact that a lot of the music on this recording was not, in fact, originally written for trumpet at all, then you will probably find this disk to be a wonderful bargain and a candidate for many a listening hour. The four pieces actually written as trumpet concertos are those by Torelli, Telemann, Leopold Mozart and Haydn, although the first three were presumably intended for the baroque natural trumpet with its very limited range. However, the sheer melodiousness of the music compensates the lack of variability in the solo part, making for some most enjoyable moments. The sonata by Marcello was originally written for oboe or flute and is here simply transcribed for trumpet; and the so-called trumpet concerto by Handel is in reality a flute sonata arranged for trumpet and orchestra by Jean Thilde. As so often with Naxos, the recording engineers have placed the soloist right in the forefront, leaving the accompanying orchestra nothing but a somewhat dampened background role, although I must say that the ?standing musicians? of the Slovakian Capella Istroplitana (well-known for their refusal to sit while playing) acquit themselves relatively well.



It bears mentioning, of course, that Naxos have re-recorded all the genuine trumpet pieces from this disk in the series ?The Art of the Baroque Trumpet? with Nils Eklund and the Drottningholm Baroque Orchestra on period instruments. Although Eklund?s instrument is not strictly historical, a ?baroque trumpet? being a euphemism for a modified natural trumpet that can be played more easily, the sound is definitely more like what the original composers would have had in mind and I would recommend everyone to get that Naxos CD to hear this music. But if it is sheer entertainment you are after rather than accuracy, the Kejmar/Skvor offering will provide pleasure enough.

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