ITG 2005

Gargan’s first piece was the Martinu Sonatine which benefited from his easy, broad tone and effortless high register: the muted passage near the middle was also particularly striking. The soloist then introduced a sequence of three contrasting British pieces: the Suite in F Major by William Lloyd Webber (father of Andrew and Julian), Terence Johns’s Pennard Castle, and The Call by Vaughan Williams. The Lloyd Webber offered us some great, long, passionate phrases in its third movement and an interesting passage in the fourth movement in which the trumpet is effectively accompanying the piano – a part very skillfully executed by Rebecca Wilt. The Johns piece is an evocative landscape picture with little fanfare-like calls then some nice broad, sweeping melodic lines: eventually after a more agitated build to a busy climax the work reprises the muted fanfares and dies away, leaving only echoes. I was intrigued by this piece and Gargan’s very committed performance of it. The Call was exceptional – a very simple and straightforward performance of a beautiful song – no fireworks or tricks, just a fine tone and some striking dynamic contrast. Gargan played it on a Galileo rotary from Germany: apparently the Singapore Symphony Orchestra has a whole set of six of these. I have not encountered this make before but it looked and sounded beautiful.

If you try to imagine a piccolo trumpet concerto written by an Italian Romantic opera composer you may like me find it a bit hard to grasp. However this is in effect what we got, as Gargan finished his recital’s first half with a terrific arrangement of Bellini’s Oboe Concerto played with great verve and directness, the piccolo’s slight edge perhaps acting as a reminder of the work’s double-reed origins. I don’t think anyone would claim that this was music which explores the outer reaches of intellectual profundity but, my word, what a technical tour de force, with Gargan’s virtuosic agility and exciting sound bringing a truly operatic flair to this tuneful, listenable music.

The second half started with a premiere. Dr. Hoi Chee Kong, a colleague of the soloist’s at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, wrote Open Trend specifically for this ITG performance. This unaccompanied trumpet piece provides more of a framework than an exact specification, so that many performance decisions – including the pitch of the instrument, mutes and speeds – are up to the player, so that it should be quite different each time it’s played. Dr. Kong emphasizes that it is meant to stay within a broadly lyrical atmosphere, but this did not rob us of some exciting passage work and a climax where an arpeggiated idea built into an increasingly busy texture then collapsed back into mysterious low trills, before a surprising glissed ending. It would be good to hear more performances of Open Trend and see how it can develop under other circumstances.

For his last piece Laurence Gargan paid tribute to his own playing roots in the British Brass Band movement – his first playing position having been in a Scottish colliery band. This really showed in Percy Code’s Zelda, a typical air and variations piece for cornet. This relaxed and assured performance was a great way to round off a very enjoyable concert, which met its “lyrical” brief in a satisfyingly low-key but high-quality way.