Gruber / Eötvös / Turnage: Trumpet Concertos

Album review

Virtuoso trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger's skills are prodigious and seem made to order for the three cutting-edge concertos presented on this 2006 Deutsche Grammophon release. These are not the flashy crowd-pleasers that most players trot out, but serious modern works that derive equally from the avant-garde and neo-Romanticism, as well as from jazz and popular music. Furthermore, Heinz Karl Gruber, Peter Eötvös, and Mark-Anthony Turnage are not generally noted for writing accessible, easily digested music, yet only the most hardened conservative will resist their colorful, dramatic, and highly expressive pieces. The first movement of Gruber's Aerial (1998-1999) has the melancholy feeling of a jazz nocturne, and Hardenberger's sweetly soulful playing makes it an atmospheric reverie. The melodically angular, rhythmically irregular second movement is edgy and perhaps a little difficult to follow in its lopsided activity, but its quirkiness and charm carry the work to an ebullient conclusion. Eötvös' Jet Stream (2002) is decidedly darker in mood and harmonically denser, and the trumpet has to penetrate rather thick textures; yet Hardenberger soars above the roiling orchestration undaunted, and makes the frequently segmented line cohere through his intensely focused tone. From the Wreckage (2004-2005), a violent tour de force by Turnage, was composed specifically for Hardenberger, and features a progression from flügelhorn to trumpet to piccolo trumpet, showing off this musician's fluid ease in all registers and his wide range of effects. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, under Eötvös' acute direction, provides a vivid and responsive accompaniment, and the high level of excitement in the playing is apparent in all three performances, but seems even greater in From the Wreckage, where the ensemble has the most material to work with. The reproduction is first rate, with realistic presence and clear separation of the trumpet from the orchestra.

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