To mark the centenary of the Berlin Philharmonic, Matthus wrote a Concerto for Trumpet, Drums and Orchestra in the spring of 1982. The soloists tend to move along different lines, crossing and complementing each other frequently, but rarely forming a genuine partnership. They take on many different facets dramatic and playful, tender and coarse, witty and furious, jocular and plaintive but avoid the martial pomp usually associated with these instruments. The concerto comprises five movements, all of them laid out according to the same concentric design. Its centrepiece is a frivolous scherzo notable for its strangely disjointed and febrile quality. This vivace movement is flanked by two highly expressive Adagios, the first in the form of a passacaglia, the second a kind of funeral march. The outer movements are an intrada of rhapsodic inspiration and a dazzling stretta whipped up to a pitch of rebellious excitement. Anyone looking for the antecedents of this grand duet in five scenes will find them in 19th-century opera, in the elaborate tableaux of Weber and Wagner, Verdi and Bizet. The dialogue of highly charged emotions suggests that the composer had a dramma in mind, but not merely one in musica. It may well reflect his more mundane experience with drums and trumpets.
(Frank Schneider, 1991)


CDs/LP:
Ludwig Güttler, Andreas Aigmüller, Dresdner Philharmonie, cond. Herbert Kegel
CD Magna AV 2100 238
CD Berlin Classics 9057-2
LP NOVA 8 85 276
Robert Hofmann (trumpet), Michael Gärtner (kettle-drums), Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken, cond. Michael Stern
CD perc.pro 40012004