In Sunday’s (12/16) Chicago Sun-Times, Kyle MacMillan writes, “While composers of all stripes have written dozens of concertos for the violin, piano and cello, the trumpet has not been so lucky. Aside from Haydn’s famous Trumpet Concerto and a few others by notable Baroque composers, the trumpet has gotten little in the way of star treatment. That probably explains in part why, when the leaders of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra commissioned Christopher Rouse to write a new piece for the 2012-13 season, they opted for a trumpet concerto. Just as important, though, was the desire to showcase Christopher Martin, who was appointed the CSO’s principal trumpet in 2005. He will be the soloist when the resulting 20-minute work, titled ‘Heimdall’s Trumpet,’ receives its world premiere at this week’s CSO subscription concerts Thursday through Dec. 22 at Symphony Center. … The piece’s title refers to the Nordic god Heimdall, whose trumpet blasts were believed to announce the beginning of Ragnarok, a kind of Armegeddon. Sometimes Rouse writes concertos with a more or less traditional structure, but in other cases, he likes to give them a freer-form, programmatic character with the soloist representing a kind of character. ‘Heimdall’s Trumpet’ falls into the latter category. Wanting a figure associated with the trumpet, he thought of the Nordic god.”
Posted December 17, 2012
