The Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra has recently enlivened our late October evenings with a series of concerts in Ankara, Mersin and Istanbul entitled Autumn Classics. The one I attended on Saturday took place in the Lütfi Kırdar Concert Hall, Istanbul. The first half was largely devoted to works showcasing the talents of the Italian trumpet-player Omar Tomasoni, one of the founders of the Italian Wonderbrass Quintet, while the second was devoted to Antonín Dvořàk’s Eighth Symphony. I hope I have got the composer’s name right, and the accents the right way up: being an ardent Czech nationalist, Dvořàk would get hot under the collar if anyone dared call him ‘Anton’, the German version of his name, and no doubt a misplaced accent would not have gone down too well, either.
From the point of view of the works performed, it was not Italy or the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which then encompassed the Czechs) that dominated the first half of the concert, but rather Armenia, the USSR and the United States. Our first taste of Mr Tomasoni’s outstanding virtuosity came with Harutyunyan’s Trumpet Concerto, written in 1950. This is one of the very few concertos written specifically for the instrument, the most famous being those of Haydn and Hummel; it was first performed in 1951, and is the composer’s most famous work. As Aleksandr Harutyunyan (1920-2012) received his training in the USSR, the piece is well orchestrated, and contains many references to Armenian folk music – which is, of course, largely in the minor key.
The name ‘Harutyunyan’ is familiar to me as I once saw it inscribed on a plaque at the Surp Pırgiç Armenian Hospital in Yedikule, and asked my companion, an Armenian dictionary-writer who now lives in the Old Folks’ Home there, what it meant. He answered that ‘Harutyun’ means ‘Ascension’, so I suppose ‘Harutyunyan’ must mean ‘Son of Ascension’.
Mr Tomasoni, who comes originally from Brescia and has been chief trumpeter at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam since 2013, is clearly in complete control of his game. The appealing modesty of his demeanour belies the brilliance of his tone. In the following video, he is performing with a Concertgebouw brass ensemble in a tango arrangement; of the two trumpeters, he is the relatively clean-shaven one on the right:
Lastly, here are three videos of the Italian Wonderbrass Quintet in action in the three movements of Bach’s Violin Concerto in A minor (one video per movement), transposed down to G minor. This just goes to show that whatever you do to Bach – play him under water with conch shells for instruments, even – he always sounds good. Unfortunately, the camera is so distant from the stage that I cannot tell who the trumpet-player is. What is certain is that the concert is taking place in Brescia, Tomasoni’s home town: