Leading British trumpeter Alison Balsom recalls her best and worst performances…
Alison Balsom – Concert Heaven
Wynton Marsalis Trumpet Concerto
London Symphony Orchestra/Antonio Pappano
Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg (April 2024)
It might sound far fetched, but you know how musicians say, ‘You’re only as good as your last gig’? Well, my last gig happened to be one of the best gigs I’ve ever done. It was a personal journey that’s been coming since I was 15 years old, when I took part in the Shell LSO Competition. I absolutely hero-worshipped the players in the London Symphony Orchestra; they were like the supersonic jets of the trumpet world. As a soloist, I’ve played with many orchestras but I’d never played with the LSO. So when the opportunity arose to play Wynton Marsalis’s new Trumpet Concerto with them on tour with Antonio Pappano, I felt so happy. Here was the moment, at last, to play with them, and to have a real piece to get my teeth into that had never been played with the orchestra before.
The concert hall was enormous…
We did four concerts and it was very exploratory, because of course the piece is brand new and Wynton Marsalis likes to make changes. It’s a living, breathing article, in a way. The fourth concert was in the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, which is enormous. It was fantastic and the orchestra played so well in that space. But it’s got a very curious acoustic for a soloist. If you stand right at the front of the stage and it’s very full of musicians, it’s a very dry acoustic.
So for that one concert I actually stood way back in the orchestra, near the brass section – which was full of my dear friends. So, I could project not only to the audience but across the orchestra. It was the most amazing feeling I think I’ve ever had playing as a soloist. I was within the sound, but coming out of the orchestra, because I was standing up and slightly raised. It felt like it was the moment I had been looking for since I was 15. And working with Pappano was a very memorable experience, too.
Alison Balsom – Concert Hell
Hummel Trumpet Concerto in E flat major
Collegium Musicum Copenhagen/Michael Schǿnwandt
Kongelige Teater, Copenhagen (September 2007)
Many people wonder why I don’t play the Hummel Concerto, which is obviously a much-loved trumpet concerto, in the original E major key. It was written in E major, which is an unusual key. But at the time it worked very well for the keyed trumpet, which fell out of favour after that time.
I play the C trumpet, which I’ve been playing since I went to the Paris Conservatoire, and I love it because it’s a slightly darker sound. People play the E flat trumpet to play these Classical period concertos, partly because it’s sweeter and slightly lighter. I really wanted to play the Hummel on the C trumpet, in E. It’s more physically demanding, but it’s got a real breadth of sound.
The concerto was in a different key!
I finally programmed it with the Collegium Musicum Copenhagen, and when I arrived at the rehearsal I discovered it was not in E! Of course, as a musician you’re not going to refuse to play to an audience who are coming in one hour, so you know you’re going to have to do it. I’d played it in E flat many times, but I hadn’t practised it in E flat for months and months. So I had just an hour to work out how to play the whole piece down a semitone!
We absolutely have those notes deep within us somewhere, but with the trumpet it’s so easy to split and miss a note. Your embouchure is set up for the exact intonation you’re expecting; of course in the Classical period, even with modern instruments there’s quite a variation in pitch depending on whether you’re playing a third or a fifth. So I remember being in a cold sweat for a good 28 minutes. I don’t remember anything about the performance; I clearly just had my head down! I was disappointmented, though, because I was so looking forward to playing it in E. And because of that, I just don’t do it.
Alison Balsom’s new album of Italian Baroque Concertos is out on Warner Classics on 18 October.