She's having a total blast - trumpeter Alison Balsom's baroque concertos are a lung-busting triumph
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Alison Balsom Jubilo Warner Bros, out now
Rating: 
The celebrated French trumpeter Maurice André loved to claim that the lung power required to play the trumpet as he did was sufficient to inflate a lorry tyre! The fragrant Alison Balsom looks too fragile to blow out the candles on her birthday cake, but in fact gives André a good run for his money in repertoire so beloved of French trumpeters, that for trumpet and organ.
There are eight Bach chorales on her latest release, in which she is partnered by the veteran Stephen Cleobury playing the organ of King’s College, Cambridge. The world-famous King’s Choir join them for a charming performance of Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring, and Balsom and Cleobury sound especially fine in Sleepers Awake.
The rest of this thoroughly enjoyable album is given over to baroque trumpet concertos or arrangements for trumpet and orchestra. Here, Balsom eschews the modern valved trumpet in favour of a baroque valveless instrument.
Alison Balsom (pictured) looks too fragile to blow out the candles on her birthday cake, but in fact gives André a good run for his money
And she sounds totally persuasive in music by Giuseppe Torelli, Johann Freidrich Fasch and an arrangement for trumpet and orchestra by Stephen Wright of Corelli’s famous Christmas Concerto, itself worth the price of this CD. The Academy of Ancient Music accompany attentively.
Daniel Barenboim Beethoven Warner Bros, out now
Rating: 
Anyone who is in any doubt that Daniel Barenboim is one of the greatest musicians of our time won’t be after listening to this thrilling bargain box. This 35-CD set was recorded over a period of more than 30 years and comprises both studio and live recordings. It’s a snip at £60 or less.
Although in his early years he was most closely associated with Mozart, Barenboim says that even as a child, Beethoven was ‘the composer who meant most to me’. And this shines through in the Piano Sonata set he recorded in his 20s.
He was almost sight-reading some of them, and perhaps these recordings should have disappeared quickly. But they didn’t because there’s so much life, energy and sheer interpretive genius in this cycle, so they have remained in the catalogue for almost 50 years.
At 27, Barenboim also recorded the Piano Concertos, with Otto Klemperer, nearly 60 years his senior. I have always loved that set but I can’t blame Warners for going here with Barenboim’s 1985 cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic.
Although in his early years he was most closely associated with Mozart, Barenboim says that even as a child, Beethoven was ‘the composer who meant most to me’
The following year, in Berlin, he recorded a radiant account of the Violin Concerto with Itzhak Perlman, who also joins him and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma for a deeply committed performance of the Triple Concerto.
The Missa Solemnis from Chicago in 1993 and Fidelio from Berlin in 1999 may not be best in class, but they are very good, with distinguished soloists.
For me, some of the most touching recordings are those he made in the late Sixties of the Cello Sonatas and the Piano Trios with his then wife Jacqueline du Pré.
These still sound remarkably vivid and bring back memories for me of seeing them live in concert in 1970, just before du Pré was obliged to retire with the MS that finally killed her. Their romance had captured the public’s imagination and they had the world at their feet. The future looked glowing with promise and achievement, but fate had other plans.
