Interview, Alison Balsom on Légende

She has over a dozen discs with orchestra and small ensemble to her name, ranging from concertos by Albinoni and Arutiunian to arrangements of Piazzólla and Django Reinhardt, but despite her regular recital-appearances with long-term musical partner Tom Poster Alison Balsom has never before recorded repertoire for trumpet and piano. Her new disc Légende (released on 13th May on Warner Classics) explores the development of this genre in the twentieth century, taking in music from seven different countries along the way and juxtaposing Hindemith's 1939 Trumpet Sonata and Jean Françaix's 1952 Sonatine with jazz standards by George Gershwin and Jerome Kern, as well as including a collaborational composition by the two performers which was inspired by the Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May.

I quizzed Alison last week about how this unusual project came into being…

This is your first recital-disc with piano: is that because this repertoire’s generally less well-known than that for trumpet and orchestra or small ensemble?

Well I think it might be that, or that it is more unusual to put these two instruments together as the timbres are very different. The repertoire is more niche yes, but there are a few incredibly profound or delicately beautiful moments with this combination which we've very much enjoyed exploring.

When did you and Tom first start working together, and did you discover much of this repertoire together?

We started playing together when I was with YCAT in about 2001... So it's almost like a long marriage! I feel that through Tom, I've learned this repertoire in much more depth than I ever could have done otherwise as he's such a complete musician. I love to think that the actual instruments - the piano and the trumpet - are secondary to what we're actually trying to say through musical phrasing, colours and emotions.

The disc’s very cosmopolitan, with composers of seven different nationalities represented! Did you consciously set out to explore repertoire from different countries, or was the central idea more about the development of trumpet repertoire over the twentieth century?

It's amazing that it's turned out as diverse as that - I had no idea ! A happy accident. I was very influenced by the rise of the trumpet as a solo art instrument in Paris, and I expected that this disc would be predominantly French - but composers such as Hindemith and Enescu were much too important to miss.

As with Paris [released in 2014], there are couple of tracks here that might loosely be defined as jazz rather than classical – is this something you might explore further in future projects, and do you have any particular stylistic influences when it comes to this side of things?

I think the two jazz inspired tracks on this album are little to do with jazz trumpet and really are just the influence of some great jazz singers who sang them as simple songs. I'm not trying to be a jazz musician per se here, but just think of Sinatra and perhaps Billie Holiday and the way they turned the words in a phrase, to make sense of a line.

Tell us a little about how you hit on Brian May as the inspiration for the track you composed together: are you both Queen fans?! Is there an improvisational element here?

Tom and I are both huge Queen fans and I am the longest standing Queen fan of all, having heard them across the fields at my grandparents’ house in Knebworth when I was a really small child. Brian May is from another musical world to ours but we both identify with his outlook on life as well as just hugely appreciating his innate musicianship. The piece did have improvisational elements, but once we committed to the recording of the piece we wrote everything down so now it's less open to changes!

Finally, can we expect a follow-up disc of nineteenth-century repertoire for trumpet and piano…?

Oh I should think so eventually... Although the trumpet was a very different instrument in the 19th century - all but lost save for the cornet. In Paris, Arban was developing the Cornet-a-Piston repertoire, so I guess that's where to go exploring next…