Recording
Title: Trumpet Concertos
Performers: Hakan Hardenberger, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Director: Neville Marriner
Year: 1986
Length: 18 minutes
Review
After a couple of completely revolutionary Beethoven works Hummel can do little but disappoint. It sounds like a throwback when compared with Beethoven's work and you can tell by both the structure and the length of the piece that it is looking back to the classical age that is now dying. The exception is the quite expressive second movement.
Still, it is a good Trumpet concerto, even if both Telemann and Haydn had better ones. It explores the capabilities of an instrument that was seeing quick development, and Hummel opts to explore the lower registers of the valved trumpet.
This is therefore, nothing particularly special but it is also not horrible, but a but safe really. Hummel was a famous composer of his time, but in hindsight, next to his contemporaries there is not much to recommend him.
Final Grade
7/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Although Hummel died famous, with a lasting posthumous reputation apparently secure, his music was quickly forgotten at the onrush of the Romantic period, perhaps because his classical ideas were seen as old-fashioned. Later, during the classical revival of the early 20th century, Hummel was passed over. Like Haydn (for whom a revival had to wait until the second half of the 20th century), Hummel was overshadowed by Mozart. Due to a rising number of available recordings and an increasing number of live concerts across the world, it seems admirers of his music are now growing again in number.
Second and third movements:
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