Imogen Whitehead
Featuring: Britten Sinfonia
Conductor: Patrick Milne
Pianist: Jennifer Walsh
CD: WOS175

Imogen Whitehead’s impressive debut release sees the principal trumpet of the Britten Sinfonia present delicately framed repertoire threaded by personal connections.

The aim to forge wider links to other performers and new audiences may be ambitious given that the eight works on show amount to just over 40 minutes of music. However, less certainly amounts to more, although in this case the current fad of providing a QR code to connect the listener to the sleeve notes seems a touch ironic. 

Thoughtful appreciations

Whitehead’s thoughtful appreciations draw the listener deep into a canvas wash of subtle textures and spikey splashes of primary colourings.  Her flugel playing in particular has a splendid vocality of husky, embracing warmth. 

 Her flugel playing in particular has a splendid vocality of husky, embracing warmth. 

The most recent commission, ‘To Stay Open’  by Charlotte Harding, emerges from a single, plaintive note that eventually evolves into a flugel flourish of self-expression – a release of tension from containment and repressed joyfulness.    

It's followed by Stephen Dodgson’s ‘Trumpet Concerto’,  accompanied by woodwind trio and small string orchestra which also opens with a sense of emergence, the flourishes building in intensity. The second movement is a homage to the great trumpeter Philip Jones, one with a deliberately individualistic line of expressiveness.  The finale has a waspish quirkiness played with controlled bite, right to its unexpected end.

Cantor

‘Modlitwa’  (‘Prayer’) creates a tender, mysterious connection of its own to its inspiration – the flugel almost a cantor-like voice of remembrance of the composer, Roxana Panufnik’s late father, Andrzej.  Love and longing hang in the air.

 ‘Farewell to Stromness’ has an air of a long-lost folk song heard on an Orkney Island breeze. 

Two works by Peter Maxwell Davies offer mature displays of authoritative technique and evocative musicality. 

‘Sonatina for Solo Trumpet’  is his triptych miniature that cleverly combines playfulness, disjointedness and decisiveness into two and half minutes of acutely observant writing and playing.  ‘Farewell to Stromness’  has an air of a long-lost folk song heard on an Orkney Island breeze. 

Nippish bite

The simplicity of Andy Scott’s ‘And Everything is Still’  offers deception – this time of a childlike innocence (inspired by a stanza from a Lemn Sissay poem), whilst Sally Beamish’s balletic ‘Trinculo’  sees the trumpet as the impish court jester from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ – the soloist a fleet of foot harlequin of sarcasm and nippish bite.

Sally Beamish’s balletic ‘Trinculo’ sees the trumpet as the impish court jester from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ –– the soloist a fleet of foot harlequin of sarcasm and nippish bite.

‘O Waly, Waly’ (arranged by her father) closes a connective recording where the soloist is balanced sensitively to a fine string ensemble and piano throughout, with a sense of understated sentimentality – the flugel following the flow of the river to bring Whitehead back home.

Iwan Fox

To purchase: http://www.imogenwhiteheadtrumpet.com

Play list:

1. To Stay Open (Charlotte Harding)

2. Trumpet Concerto (Stephen Dodgson)
i. Molto Moderato
ii. Andante Sostenuto
iii. Allegro

5. Modlitwa (Prayer) (Andrzej & Roxanna Panufnik)

6. Sonatina for Solo Trumpet (Peter Maxwell Davies)
7. Farewell to Stromness (Peter Maxwell Davies)

8. And Everything Is Still (Andy Scott)
9. Trinculo (Sally Beamish)
10. O Waly Waly (Trad. Arr. Simon Hancock)