Alison Balsom: Shines with Haydn & Hummel Trumpet Concertos

Alison Balsom is celebrating the release of her fourth album on EMI with a disc filled with nothing but the absolute highlights of the Trumpet repertoire: Both the Haydn and the Hummel Concerto have established themselves as the pieces every artist wants to play and every audience loves to hear. Even though these pieces have been recorded several times before, it will be interesting to see how Balsom, who has been credited as one of the scene's most versatile and voluble interpreters, will tackle the task of making them sound every inch as spontaneous and fresh as when they were first performed. Excerpts available from a specially created microsite show that her approach was marked by concentrating on the splendour and shining regality of the works on the one hand and on juxtaposing them with slightly less well-known pieces from the same time on the other. „Haydn & Hummel Trumpet Concertos“ will therefore also include music by Giuseppe Torelli (likely performed on feast days in the San Petronio Basilica, as the liner notes to the album point out) as well as the „charming, traditional“ Concerto for Hunting Horn and Strings by Czech composer Johann Baptist Neruda.