APLAINTIVE trumpet A melody cuts over the plangent sound of the cor anglais. Gentle dissonance reveals the work's modernism: composed in 1939, Aaron Copland's Quiet City is a meditative contemplation of change. It was the piece that Alison Balsom performed in the brass finals of BBC Young Musician in 1998, the competition that propelled the trumpeter into the spotlight and marked the beginning of a new phase for the instrument. Copland's work is the title track to Miss Balsom's latest recording, the first installment in a new five-album deal with Warner Classics.
Such arrangements are now unusual record labels like to leave capacity for the next shiny soloist-but everything about Miss Balsom's career is out of the ordinary: the virtuoso has shown that the trumpet can handle everything from Purcell to Piazzolla. She has premiered concertos by James MacMillan and Guy Barker and breathed new life into classic works by Vivaldi, Bach, and Handel. These feature among her 15-album back-catalog for Warner (then EMI Classics), the cover artwork for which is framed and displayed in her downstairs loo. A sepia-tinged image of Miss Balsom holding a valve-less instrument-the cover for a Baroque programme -watches over visitors as they wash their hands.
'It was the Copland piece that unlocked the expressivity of the trumpet for me,' reveals Miss Balsom. 'It changed how I view the instrument.'
This story is from the August 17, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
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This story is from the August 17, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
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