Twentieth Century Trumpet Music with Merkelo

courtesy of Naxos of America

A little over a week ago, Naxos released a rather distinctive album of trumpet concertos featuring Canadian-Ukrainian soloist Paul Merkelo. This involves a relatively unique pairing of compositions by Mieczysław Weinberg and his close colleague Dmitri Shostakovich. The composer of the opening selection is the Armenian composer Alexander Arutiunian. Merkelo performs with the Russian National Orchestra conducted by Hans Graf. The recording itself seems to be the latest one that Amazon.com has fumbled, but Presto Music has created a Web page for both the compact disc and four download formats, the latter including a PDF file of the accompanying booklet.

The Weinberg concerto is his Opus 94 in B-flat major, completed in 1967. It is a reminder of just how prolific Weinberg was and the disappointing paucity of performances of his music since his death in 1996. Weinberg is engagingly prankish in thumbing his nose at concerto conventions. This is immediately evident from the titles of his three movements: “Etudes,” “Episodes,” and “Fanfares.” As might be expected, the soloist is confronted with challenging demands in the first movement, while the third movement is a wild ride through just about every fanfare in the conventional repertoire. (Unless I am mistaken, this was the first time that any of Weinberg’s compositions got me to laugh out loud.)

The Shostakovich offering, on the other hand, was more than a little unexpected. Basically, Merkelo and trumpet virtuoso Timofei Dokschitzer joined forces to create a richer trumpet part for Shostakovich’s Opus 35, his first piano concerto scored for piano, trumpet, and strings. They undertook this project with the approval of the Shostakovich estate, which also granted Merkelo the rights to make the first recording of his efforts with Dokschitzer. Those efforts culminate in a new cadenza for the trumpet in the final movement, composed by Dokschitzer.

The pianist on this recording is Jae-Hyuck Cho. Both Cho and Graf assisted Merkelo and Dokschitzer in their undertaking. My guess is that both of them wanted listeners to remember that Shostakovich conceived this music as a piano concerto with accompaniment. Nevertheless, one comes away with the sense that Cho’s efforts were secondary. Shostakovich was the pianist when this concerto was first performed, and I have to wonder how he would have reacted to this revised version had he lived long enough to listen to it.

Dokschitzer also provided the cadenza for the Arutiunian. This is a single-movement composition, which, for the most part, follows conventional structure. Thus, the cadenza makes its appearance before the coda. Arutiunian’s fellow Armenian composer, Aram Khachaturian, saw him as a promising Soviet composer, making this point at a Moscow Music Congress. However, while listening to this concerto, I found myself wondering whether Khachaturian’s approval had to do with Arutiunian following in his footsteps!

Taken as a whole, I would say that the Weinberg concerto rises about its predecessor and successor in making this album an engaging listening experience.