Another John Holt Triumph

John Holt, a professor at the University of North Texas and principal trumpet with the Dallas Opera Orchestra, is undoubtedly one of the great modern masters of the trumpet.  Led by enthusiastic reviews, I acquired several of his recital discs over the years, and now have to report a new triumph with his recording of three 20th century trumpet concerti on Crystal Records CD765.  Accompanied by Kirk Trevor and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Holt produces that golden tone of his that just stays in your head!

Most people will never have heard of the three composers.  Never fear, each of them has produced an enjoyable work, full of melody, rich harmonies, and firm tonal centers. 

The earliest of the three, a 1955 effort by Alexandra Pakhmutova, a Russian composer born in 1929, is described in the album notes as having "rich melodies and lush timbres" which constitute an homage to Rachmaninov and Prokofiev.  I beg to differ.  To my ears, the heaviest influence here is Khachaturian!  The notes mention that she reworked the finale in 1978 at the request of the great Russian trumpet virtuoso, Timofei Dokshitzer, so clearly this piece was recognized in the Soviet Union as having merit.  Why have we never heard it before?  The Khachaturian influence shows itself in the folk-like harmonies and sweeping melodies, with a firm pulsing rhythmic framework.

Eric Ewazen is more a known quantity, at least to me.  Ewazen, born 1954 in Cleveland, is a composition professor at Juilliard who specializes in the concerto form, to judge by his work and recording catalogue, and in recent months I have become very enthusiastic about his music.  The trumpet concerto is a reworking of his quintet for trumpet and strings, which is available in a very fine recording featuring his frequent collaborator Kris Gekker, who commissioned it.  Ewazen's music has that quality, similar to the music of JS Bach, that might be described as chameleon-like, in the sense that it is all about the movement of the lines in counterpoint with each other, such that the medium in which it is conveyed is perhaps not so important to the intrinsic value of the music.  What works as a chamber piece can also work as a concerto accompanied by orchestra, and I bet this piece would also work as a flute concerto or maybe even a violin concerto.   This is not to take away from the totally idiomatic sound of the trumpet solo, brilliantly handled by Holt in this recording, just to say that as wonderful as the timbre is in contributing to the overall effect, I suspect the same combination of notes would make a  brilliant effect with other wind soloists in the same range, even if different from the effect of the trumpet.  Different aspects of the music would be emphasized, that's all.  Anyway, if one is looking for influences in this music, there are many.  I hear some Prokofiev in the wide-ranging melodic lines and quirky harmonies, always safely tonal but much more free to wander than in the other works on this disc, and also I hear traces of Alan Hovhaness, but with much more structural discipline.  Ewazen remains a favorite, and this trumpet concerto is a terrific discovery.

Finally, there is Anthony Plog's 2nd Trumpet Concerto.  Plog, California-born (1947), had a successful trumpet playing career, then got bit by the composing bug and has been teaching at the State Music Academy in Freiburg, Germany, since 1993.  The biggest influence I hear on his music is Shostakovich, but there are certainly others.  This is the biggest piece on the disc, lasting almost half an hour in four movements, but there is constant forward movement, and it is no less enchanting in its way than the prior pieces.  (Pakhmutova's concerto is in a compact single movement lasting less than a quarter-hour, while Ewazen's falls midway between the other two in length, and is also in four brief movements.) 

All three of these composers have absorbed a variety of influences, but each has produced work in his or her own distinctive voice.  After hearing these pieces two or three times, you would easily tell them apart from the differences in harmony, orchestration, and melodic form, and yet they are all related on this disc by the superb artistry of Holt.  The only weak spot, really, is that the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra does not have a big, virtuosic string section of the type that could really do justice to this music, so the string sound is a bit thin and less than lush at times, although Trevor makes sure that balances are well handled and the ensemble is reasonably tidy in the challenging rhythmic sections.  How I would love to hear these pieces accompanied by one of the major American orchestras!  (Indeed, to me it is a SCANDAL that the New York Philharmonic does not regularly play Ewazen's music.  Here is a major compositional talent, working just across the street, producing listener-friendly music that would be a big hit with Philharmonic audiences.  How will our repertory be refreshed if the major orchestras ignore what is on their doorstep?  James Levine up in Boston is playing plenty of contemporary music.... so look what we lost when they lured him north.)

Finally, Crystal, a US-based independent label that has specialized in wind music, provides excellent sound engineering and production values, with informative program notes by Dr. Priscilla Holt (the soloist's wife??).

Comments

[Roman Sinelnikov]

I would like to mention, in addition to your very interesting review, that in the former USSR Alexandra Pakhmutova is a really famous person. The facts that most of music for the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 was written by her as well as she was visited by President Putin on her 75th birthday in 2004 are the best confirmations. From 1960s till Gorbachev's era the songs and symphonic works of Alexandra Pakhmutova led the mainstream of official Soviet culture, so the opinion about her and her music changed together with the public opinion about the Soviet life. After the crash of the USSR, in 1991-1993, her music was out of performance since the official point of view was that "all the Soviet should be cut off from our life". At the moment the public opinion in Russia about Mrs. Pakhmutova is much more positive than negative.

[Art Leonard]

Thanks for these interesting comments. Before I heard this recording, I had never heard of Pakhmutova, and now I am motivated to try to hear more of her music.
By coincidence, while browsing in a record store a few days ago, I ran into my first cousin, once removed, to whom I mentioned this recording, because he is a trumpet player... And when I mentioned this concerto, he said that yes, he had studied it when he was a student at Juilliard back in the 1960s, and it was a very well-known piece.
And yet, in years of concertgoing (more than a quarter-century of avid concertgoing) in NYC, I had never encountered it, and in years of collecting classical recordings, dating back to the mid-1960s and with wide-ranging curiosity, I had never before encountered any of her music. Clearly it is time to play catch-up, and I hope that there are other works by her available to a collector in the US!