Alison Balsom - Seraph: Trumpet Concertos by MacMillan, Takemitsu, Arutiunian, Zimmermann (2012)

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Alison Balsom - Seraph: Trumpet Concertos by MacMillan, Takemitsu, Arutiunian, Zimmermann (2012)

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British trumpet player Alison Balsom has established herself as one of the leading performers on her instrument in the early 21st century. This 2012 album features three modern and contemporary concertos for trumpet. Balsom is phenomenally secure in her technique and in the musicality she brings to each of the pieces. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lawrence Renes, and the Scottish Ensemble, led by Jonathan Morton, provide colorful and energetic accompaniment. Bernd Alois Zimmermann's 1954 Trumpet Concerto is the standout work on the album. It is certainly one of the most distinguished, substantial, and immediately appealing trumpet concertos of the 20th century. It is subtitled "Nobody knows de troubles I see," and uses the melody of the spiritual as the basis for its sophisticated musical development. Like many of Zimmermann's works, its themes are political and he changed the title from "seen" to "see" to highlight the ongoing struggle for racial equality throughout the world, with pointed reference to the lingering racist attitudes of National Socialism in post-war Germany. It's an intensely dramatic and inventive piece; Zimmermann interweaves the original spiritual with jazz influences and modernist techniques in a way that's emotionally direct and thoroughly engrossing. Balsom negotiates its extreme demands with complete assurance. The Trumpet Concerto in A flat by Armenian composer Alexander Arutiunian, written in 1950, bears the stamp of the Soviet demand that music be immediately entertaining for the proletariat. The concerto is tuneful and uses folk material and for the most part sounds like it could be the soundtrack for an "exotic" adventure film. What it lacks in musical sophistication it makes up for in the opportunities it gives the soloist to really shine melodically. James MacMillan's 2010 concerto Seraph, which Balsom premiered, is an inoffensive but not especially profound work, characterized by pleasant, lyrical note-spinning. EMI's sound is pristine, balanced, and nicely ambient.

Review by Stephen Eddins, Allmusic.com

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Alison Balsom - Seraph: Trumpet Concertos by MacMillan, Takemitsu, Arutiunian, Zimmermann (2012)

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After the epic confrontation of James MacMillan’s earlier concerto, its successor deftly combines trumpet and strings in music that ranges from the incisiveness of its first movement, via the ‘seraphic’ plaintiveness of its lightly textured Adagio to the robust interplay of the finale. Balsom takes its not inconsiderable demands in her stride, with the Scottish Ensemble unstinting in its support.

Coming after the pensive Lutosławski tribute that is Toru Takamitsu’s Paths, Alexander Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto remains an effective accommodation of Stalinist dictates – nimbly alternating between rhetoric and energy with an appealing melodiousness redolent of Glière. Balsom projects it with due vitality, though Bibi Black finds a degree more spontaneity and expressive poise. Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s is arguably the finest of all latter-day concertos: its sequence of variations on the spiritual Nobody knows de trouble I see (an evocative arrangement by Balsom and Tom Poster prefaces this account) moving from real ominousness, through glancing irony and a bracing workout for soloist and orchestra, to fateful uncertainty. Reinhold Friedrich evinces greater command in those central sections, their bluesy overtones a little cautious as rendered by the BBC Scottish Symphony, yet Balsom’s heartfelt eloquence elsewhere cannot be gainsaid.

The sound in all three locations is clear and transparent without lacking impact, and the notes are succinctly informative. A pity that another concerto could have been included though, if Balsom is planning a follow-up disc (how about the Maxwell Davies, Panufnik and Weinberg concertos?), so much the better.

Review by Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone Magazine

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Alison Balsom - Seraph: Trumpet Concertos by MacMillan, Takemitsu, Arutiunian, Zimmermann (2012)

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Alison Balsom - Seraph: Trumpet Concertos by MacMillan, Takemitsu, Arutiunian, Zimmermann (2012)

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Alison Balsom - Seraph: Trumpet Concertos by MacMillan, Takemitsu, Arutiunian, Zimmermann (2012)

Close