My contact over there in the otherworld of Tinton Falls has taken to economizing by making half-photocopies of liner notes for me. Thus this record appears to be for "Rompette et Piano." I shall refuse to yield to the urge to translate this!
You'd think that by now M. Andre (that neo-Aeolian windbag), would have exhausted all the original music for solo trumpet, and probably all of the possible transcriptions. Yet here he is again with a virtually virgin program of music intended for trumpet by (mostly) first-rate composers.
The one "familiar" piece in the program is, of course, the Hindemith sonata. Not that it's the sort of thing you are apt to hear on your local bad music station, or even in the annual student concert at the Junior High School. But trumpeters are grateful for it, to judge from the recordings listed in Schwann. To be sure most of them are by trumpeters you never heard of and recorded on the kind of label that can only be found by timidly inquiring of the grumpy fellow in King Karol's main store on 42nd St. But there is one on Columbia in which none other than Glenn Gould officiates at the piano--no doubt in this instance a trio for trumpet, piano, and humming voice. Hindemith wrote the piece in Switzerland where he was living in voluntary exile from Naziland, his music having officially been declared "degenerate" --i.e., you couldn't march to it. The Sonata was, however, part of a broader plan, which the composer had been working at for some time and was to complete sixteen years later: specifically, he was supplying each of the orchestral instruments with its very own sonata. This was in line with his concept of Gebrauchsmusik--music to be used; the sonatas were intended not so much for public performance as for the delectation and improvement of the user. Thus the emphasis is not on virtuosity for its own sake, which perhaps explains why we've not had a recording of the Trumpet Sonata from M. Andre before. The work is curious in that it begins with two very lively, not to say brilliant movements, and concludes with a Trauermusik (funeral music) on the old chorale "All men must die." Commentators like to speculate on the whys and wherefores of this gloomy conclusion; personally I can't think of any year in which the sense of our mortality lowered more heavily than in 1939!
At one time one of the best-known works by the Swiss-born Arthur Honegger was the Symphony No. 2 for strings, in the final movement of which he unexpectedly introduces a solo trumpet with hair-raising effect. Five years later, in 1947, he wrote this Intrada for trumpet and piano. The symphony has been recorded many times, but I've never before encountered the Intrada (which is not mentioned in Grove's or Baker's; one wonders if it was intended as Gebrauchsmusik, by way of providing entrance to the Conservatoire for aspiring trumpeters.) The annotator describes it as a sort of early-Italian-opera aria, not lacking in virtuosity.
Georges Enesco was best known in his lifetime as a violinist, a teacher (of Yehudi Menuhin among others), a conductor, and the composer of two Rumanian Rhapsodies, which, though done to death, are still stunning pieces. He has occasionally been represented on American records by one and another of his chamber works, but for his more ambitious efforts--e.g. three symphonies, a huge opera Oedipus--you'll have to track down imports from his native--and justifiably proud--Rumania. The Legende was written as a test piece for the Paris Conservatoire, Enesco having made Paris his home.
Jean Hubeau, M. Andre's accompanist here, is hardly known stateside at all. like Enesco, he is noted as performer, conductor, and teacher, as well as a prolific composer. The Sonata ranges widely in style, consisting of a sarabande, an intermezzo, and a blues.
