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Trumpet player takes the breath away in premiering concerto named after him Paul Hopwood The Australian 11 May 2015 English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new trumpet concerto, Hakan, is named after the esteemed Swedish trumpet player Hakan Hardenberger, who gave the world premiere on Friday, in the presences of the composer, as part of this West Australian Symphony Orchestra concert. As well as being widely regarded as the world’s leading classical trumpet soloist, Hardenberger has an astounding record of commissioning and performing contemporary music. Hakan is in fact the second trumpet concerto that Turnage has written for him, following the highly successful From the Wreckage of 2004. Hakan is longer, darker and more intense than its older sibling. In the first movement, coloured primarily by drums and brass, Turnage spins musical material from two small melodic fragments, the first widely spaced and angular, the second chromatic and rhythmically unstable. The interaction between these ideas, which mutate, expand, and merge into the contrapuntal orchestral accompaniment, makes for fascinating listening. The oppressive mood, stemming from Turnage’s obsessive focus on motivic development and static textures, lifts somewhat in the second movement. The composer’s lifelong engagement with American music is evident here, a spacious and darkly atmospheric arietta in which the solo line owes th much to the phrasing of mid-20 century jazz. The final movement is a set of variations, and again the principal interest lies in the intense, somewhat dry exploration of the scurrying chromatic theme. Unlike the other works on the program by Vaughan Williams and Sibelius, Hakan eschews lyricism. It offers no easy path the musical beauty. Instead it sounds gritty, urban and thoroughly modern. Hardenberger’s performance was essentially beyond criticism. Technically faultless, his tone was brilliant when required, but there was also little of the supple breathiness one might expect from a jazz soloist, which brought warmth and vulnerability. The tremendously demanding solo part required, at times, frighteningly fast wide leaps, intensely chromatic scurrying, and the most delicate, flute-like high melodies. All challenges were met with scarcely believable aplomb. Conductor Baldur Bronniman was admirably clear and convincing in his reading of Turnage’s new work. His clarity and rhythmic focus also served Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis particularly well, and both here and in Sibelius’s The Swan of Tuonela he conjured a lean and unified response from the strings. Leanne Glover’s cor anglais solo in the Swan was every bit as beautiful as the music demanded. Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony was, perhaps, less successful. The opening movement seemed a little too detached and austere, and the performance lacked a little momentum as a result. Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony 8 & 9 May Perth Concert Hall