Alongside his celebrated performances of the classical repertory, Håkan Hardenberger is also renowned as a pioneer of significant new trumpet works. The three works on this album were all composed with him in mind, and illustrate his many-faceted musical persona. The most recent of them, ‘True Stories’ by Betsy Jolas, was written in order to give Hardenberger and Roger Muraro occasion to perform together. Its title springs from the fact that the work forms the composer’s first attempt to work with sounds selected from daily life and either ‘tamed’ through stylization or left quasi crude. Sally Beamish found inspiration for her concerto in Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities which, in her own words, ‘reflects aspects of city life: the organized architecture but seeming randomness; the sparkling though shabby beauty, in contrast to the dark, sordid underbelly – rusting pipes, waste, squalor.’ Finally, in …miramondo multiplo…, Olga Neuwirth incorporates stylistic and melodic references, for instance from her own works and the music of Handel, but also to the performance style of the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, lending each movement a musical atmosphere of its own. As a result, the concerto has been described as ‘a sequence of five very different musical stories’. The conductor in all three works is Martyn Brabbins, whose credentials in the field of contemporary music are impressive, having conducted hundreds of world premières across the globe.

Ever since his very first disc, released by BIS some thirty years ago, Hakan Hardenberger has earned recognition for his performances of the classical repertory, but also as a pioneer of significant and vituosic new music for the trumpet. Collaborations with composers such as Takemitsu, Part, Henze, and H.K. Gruber have resulted in numerous works, of which the two recorded here are among the more recent. Brett Dean's concerto Dramatis personae is named after the term used for the list of characters in a stage work, and casts the soloist in the role of the ''Hero''. Dean's protagonist is a complex one, however, with traits inspired by comic book super heros as well as the classical flawed heros of literature and legend: ''Soliloquy'', the second movement, is a reference to Hamlet, while Charlie Chaplin's character in Modern Times has inspired the work's finale, ''The Accidental Revolutionary''. If there is a hero in the concerto by Luca Francesconi, it is Miles Davis. In his comment sto the work, Francesconi talks of Davis as ''a musician who transcends all labels'' with ''a delicate, cracked sound'' and a voice which speaks directly to the listener. Hard Pace, the title of Francesconi's work, is an allusion to a difficult journey, but it is also a conflation of the names of the performers for whom it was written: Hardenberger, Antonio Pappano and the Santa Cecilia Orchestra. On the present recording it is the Gothenburg Symphony and conductor John Storgards who provide Hakan Hardenberger with expert support in these demanding and rewarding scores.

Craig Morris, former principal trumpet player of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has recorded brilliant solo trumpet versions of three Philip Glass classics. Morris’s new recording features works ranging from Glass’s constantly shifting ‘Melodies’ (1995) to the driving minimalist rhythms and figures of ‘Gradus’ (1968) and ‘Piece in the Shape of a Square’ (1967). ‘Melodies’ was written as incidental music for a play based on the novel, Un Captif Amoureux (Prisoner of Love) by the French author Jean Genet. Glass’s thirteen melodies cover a wide range of emotion, from touching and introspective to joyous and dancing. The visual element of ‘Piece in the Shape of a Square,’ is much more a part of the composition than it is in ‘Gradus.’ The music is set up in a roughly 10’ square, with one performer on the inside of the square and one performer on the outside. The performer on the inside moves around the square in a clockwise direction, while the performer on the outside moves around in a counterclockwise direction. Virtuoso trumpeter Craig Morris plays both parts on this fascinating recording.