Top trumpeter returns

Press, 24 October 1978, Page 18

Top trumpeter returns

Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, Beethoven's Triple Concerto, and works by Poulenc and Webern will be featured by the Canterbury Orchestra when it presents the third concert in its subscription series in the Town Hall on Saturday. Gordon Webb will be the soloist in the Haydn Concerto. Since he left New Zealand in 1963 to take up an appointment as principal trumpet with the South African Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra, he has held many positions in the orchestral

world. He has been principal trumpet with the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philarmonic, and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. He was offered the position of principal trumpet with the Israel Philarmonic, but declined in favour of the London Philarmonic. Probably his most notable performances of the Haydn Concerto were with this orchestra on tour of China in 1973, when he played it in Shanghai, Canton, and Peking. More recently he has been principal trumpet of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and he is now a free-lance trumpet soloist. Haydn wrote his trumpet concerto in 1796. A year earlier a Viennese instrument maker had produced a valve trumpet, and Haydn seized on this invention, which transformed the natural trumpet into a full-fledged ensemble instrument. He created one of the most dazzling trumpet concertos in the repertoire. Ruth Pearl, the leader of the Canterbury Orchestra, Georg Pedersen, the cellist, and Dobbs Franks, the orchestra’s music director will be soloists in the Beethoven Triple Concerto. Ruth Pearl and Dobbs Franks appear regularly as recitalists in the city. Georg Pedersen, the Danish cellist, was heard in the Canterbury Orchestra’s last concert as soloist in the Saint-Saens concerto. He is co-princi-pal cellist of the Royal Danish Philarmonic in Copenhagen and will return to this post early in 1979. He is, at present, senior lecturer in cello at the University of Auckland. The Triple Concerto comes from Beethoven’s middle period, and was completed in 1804, being contemporary with works such as the “Eroica” Sym-

phony, the “Appassionata” Sonata, and “Fidelio.” The concert will open with Poulenc’s Sinfonietta, a work commissioned by the 8.8. C. in 1947. The work is elegant, witty, and light-hearted. Poulenc was a member of Les Six, the group of composers who were loosely allied in their rejection of the serious and scholarly in music. Their mentor, Satie, was a renowned musical prankster and his irreverent attitudes to the music establishment of the time influenced Poulenc. The Sinfonietta embodies this spirit of fun and lightness. Webern’s Symphony 0p.21 completes the programme. The work was written in 1928 and is now established as a masterpiece of this composer’s

delicate and highly refined art. The work is in two movements and returns to the classical forms of Haydn and Mozart. The first movement is in sonata form; the second is a set of variations. However, the substance of the music is revolutionary, expanding the frontiers of 12-tone music even further than perhaps its original tor, Arnold Schoenberg, could have imagined. Delicate instrumental colour transfigures the music, and even now it is a magical sound world that Webern evokes. In addition to the performance in the Town Hall, the Orchestra will give the programme at Darfield in the Darfield High School Hall at 8 p.m. on Friday.