[ Warner Classics / CD ]
Release Date: Friday 8 November 2019
With an album of celebration - both joyful and solemn - trumpeter Alison Balsom again declares her love for the baroque era, which she calls "the golden age of the trumpet". Joining Handel's exuberant Music for the Royal Fireworks are works by two other German-born composers - JS Bach and Telemann - and by the London-born Henry Purcell. "These baroque composers knew the instrument they were writing for," says Balsom. "There is such value in searching out the sound that they would have heard themselves, with the intention of authenticity. When it comes together it is utterly thrilling."
"The album's real gold lies in its two D major solo trumpet works by Purcell and Telemann: the ravishingly soft and lyrical solemnity Balsom brings to the opening Adagio of Telemann's first Trumpet Concerto; the suppleness she brings to the Purcell Sonata's outer movements and the luminous, clean-toned sobriety of its strings-only Adagio." Gramophone
Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV351
Purcell: Sonata for Trumpet and Strings in D major, Z850
Bach, J S: Jesu, bleibet meine Freude (from Cantata BWV147 'Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben')
Telemann: Trumpet Concerto, TWV 51:D7
Bach, J S: Christmas Oratorio, BWV248
Purcell: Funeral Sentences for the Death of Queen Mary, Z. 27