Hummel: Oberon’s Magic Horn, Etc

“The four concertante pieces on this imaginative disc were written between 1820 and 1833, primarily as vehicles to show off Hummel's virtuosity as the keyboard. Christopher Hinterhuber, who has already recorded piano music by CPE Bach for Naxos, is a first-rate soloist, accompanied by the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, one of the oldest in Sweden... An excellent disc of long-buried rarities, well worth hearing.” --Gramophone Magazine, February 2008

Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice - February 2008

Hummel’s long career as one of Europe’s most celebrated virtuosi owed as much to his resourcefulness as a composer as it did to his exceptional technique as a pianist. The four works on this recording illustrate the vitality of Hummel’s musical imagination at the height of his career. Oberons Zauberhorn (Oberon’s Magic Horn) is a strikingly original fantasy based loosely on Weber’s opera Oberon. Le retour de Londres, a large-scale rondo composed in 1833, opens with a slow introduction remarkable for its beauty and expressive power which leads into the inventive and brilliantly virtuosic Rondeau.

Album Reviews

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Hummel: Violin Concertos in E & G, Piano Variations, Potpourri

'A warm welcome for this latest disc of concertante works by Hummel, superbly played and recorded, particularly since three of the works are new to the catalogue, notably the Violin Concerto.' --Fanfare

'Ehnes relishes his every moment, supported to the hilt by Shelley and the London Mozart Players on top form. An unusually helpful note from Derek Carew and first-rate sound from Rachel Smith and Ralph Couzens round out another excellent release in Shelley's ongoing Hummel series.' --International Record Review

The provenance of the manuscript of the Violin Concerto in G major is listed by one specialist as ‘unverifiable’. It is not significant that the manuscript is not in Hummel’s hand, but the virtuosity of the solo violin is unexpected. Hummel had learned the violin but was far from good enough to play the solo part. A possible explanation, which would account for the variety of different hands in the manuscript, is that this may have been a joint work, similar to a guitar concerto, now sadly lost, which he wrote with guitar virtuoso-composer Mauro Guiliani.

The format of the Adagio and Rondo alla Polacca may have its provenance in the slow-movement-joined-to-finale unit which became detached from the solo concerto. It opens on the strings in E major, a solo cadenza leading into the sprightly Polacca in the dominant of A.

Drawing on the popularity of their solo or small-chamber counterparts, variation-sets and rondos for solo instrument and orchestra were enormously popular in the early nineteenth century, not least because they were usually based on folk tunes or opera arias well known to audiences. The Variations in B flat was one of three works he wrote for performance during his extended concert tour of Paris and London in 1830.

Written in 1820, Hummel dedicated his Potpourri for viola and orchestra to a viola-playing friend. Up until recently it was known only in a truncated version for strings with a couple of clarinets which gave no idea of the piece’s richness. The work is, in fact, scored for a large orchestra.The ‘potpourri’ was an improvisatory form which brought together, and occasionally interwove, already popular songs and arias, and here Hummel includes pieces from the operas of his idol, Mozart, and of Rossini, whom he also admired.

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Haydn & Hummel: Trumpet Concertos

“Balsom plays them all with great virtuosity, varied toned and good style. The German Chamber Philharmonic provides spirited, carefully detailed support.” --BBC Music Magazine, October 2008 *****

“…a stunning recital from a poet of this traditionally martial instrument.” --Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2008

“The first movement of the Haydn is a model of concision which Balsom plays gloriously” --Classic FM Magazine, December 2010

“Haydn and Hummel composed their concertos for Anton Weidinger's newfangled keyed trumpet, whose timbre was appreciably softer than the natural trumpet (contemporaries likened it to an oboe or clarinet). More than any performance, Alison Balsom brings out the mellow, even veiled, colouring of so much of the writing.

Where clarion brilliance is in order she can peal out with the best of them. But what lingers in the memory is the lyrical grace of her phrasing, and her delicacy of shading.

In the entertaining Hummel Concerto, with its palpable Mozart cribs, she mingles tonal subtlety and swagger in the opening movement, spins a refined, beautifully modulated line in the slow movement, and makes the finale's pyrotechnics properly dazzling. The spruce Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie match her all the way in sensitivity and rhythmic verve.

Moving back in time, Balsom savours the bold, bugling fanfares of Torelli's miniature concerto and makes a persuasive case for a pleasant, if hardly distinctive, mid-18th-century concerto by the Czech Johann Baptist Neruda, written for the corno da caccia but forgivably pilfered by trumpeters hard-up for solo concertos. In sum, a stunning recital from a poet of this traditionally martial instrument.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

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