Ole Edvard Antonsen - Nordic Trumpet Concertos (2007) Hi-Res

Sweden's BIS label has taken upon itself the task of reviving the concerto genre for contemporary times, and Scandinavia's large crop of young composers has been only too happy to oblige with new works. Prolific Norwegian trumpeter and cornetist Ole Edvard Antonsen here blares his way through no fewer than four new works of diverse character, most of them with an appealingly playful style even as they are undergirded with various sophisticated techniques. The Concerto for trumpet and orchestra of Finnish composer Harri Wessman, composed in 1987 for a small municipal orchestra in Finland, is a jaunty take-off on the oft-mooted affinity between Baroque music and jazz; Wessman takes his harmonies from jazz and his square rhythms and clear formal structure from the Baroque, and he complied with a request to give the last movement "a kind of Robin Hood mood." The most intriguing work is perhaps Alfred Janson's Norwegian Dance for cornet and strings, which is only intermittently dancelike -- instead, Janson tosses bits of dance rhythm on top of a rising dithyramb that generally seems intended to evoke the power of the dance. Both works are clearly tonal; Förvillelser, by Sweden's Britta Byström, is less so, but its five short movements are individual atmospheres that give the soloist the chance to unwind his personality. (One would never guess at the work's program, however, unless told.) Conductor Christian Lindberg's Akbank Bunka is a sheer romp (Akbank is a Turkish bank and Bunka a Japanese word meaning culture), and he induces in the Nordic Chamber Orchestra a relaxed sense of fun not only here but throughout. This disc will be a pleasant find for any lover of the brass instruments, and especially for any programmer looking for a concise concerto that everyone from the connoisseurs to the dilettantes will enjoy.