Cimarosa: Oboe Concerto in C major/C minor

'She makes the trumpet sing with an irresistible exuberance and eloquence.' With the human voice a particular inspiration in the music of Italy, the words of The Times have a special resonance for Alison Balsom in these works composed or inspired by Italian composers of the 18th century. This collection provides an apt vehicle for the award-winning trumpeter's characteristic brilliance and grace.

Following the popular and critical international success of her Haydn and Hummel concertos recording, Alison Balsom has recorded a programme of Italian Baroque concertos. The album has quickly garnered critics’ praise: “The fast movements are played with sparkling ease and technical brilliance. The slow movement [Balsom] forms delicately, tenderly, yet without denying she’s playing a brass instrument.” - MDR Figaro

After the release of Caprice in 2006, Gramophone wrote, “It's not often that a young musician appears on the scene abundantly blessed with everything both an A&R and marketing person could dream of, but the young British trumpeter Alison Balsom fulfils just such a dream. She's a musician of prodigious talent with an inquisitive, fresh approach to music-making. She is connected to her public, and rewards their attention with playing of a winning ease and fluency. She has an engaging personality … and the intelligence to take her burgeoning career well in her stride.” In this new recording, Balsom, the 2009 Classical BRIT Artist of the Year, plays popular concertos originally composed for the violin or oboe by Vivaldi, Tartini, B. Marcello, Albinoni and Cimarosa, accompanied by the Scottish Ensemble.

“The days are long gone when blowing a brass instrument was a male preserve. Even so, the young trumpeter Alison Balsom remains a singular figure. It’s not that she's long and blonde; it's the roar of her talent that makes her stand out, along with her knack for breaking down barriers and making the trumpet so much more than a toot machine.” The Times

In 1933 Evelyn Rothwell (1911-2008) had been working for two years in her first professional post as second oboist in the orchestra of the Covent Garden Touring Company, when she received an invitation to audition for the position as first oboe in the Scottish Orchestra. Her progress to the point where she was eligible to be considered for such a post had been rapid, for she had only started to play her chosen instrument a few years earlier in her late teens. She had spent some time with Léon Goossens as a student at the Royal College of Music. Evelyn Rothwell gave the first performance of the Pergolesi Concerto in December 1935, with Barbirolli conducting the Scottish Orchestra. In 1939 Evelyn Rothwell married Barbirolli, and joined him in the USA, where he had been musical director of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra for three years.

At one concert, Evelyn Barbirolli played the Pergolesi Concerto, and she was heard by the Australian composer Arthur Benjamin. Benjamin was very taken by the arrangement, and offered to put together a similar work based on music by Domenico Cimarosa. Nothing was heard from him until the Barbirollis were leaving Vancouver by train on a journey to Los Angeles, where John was engaged to conduct concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. The train was already starting to move when Benjamin suddenly appeared and thrust the newly completed score into the surprised Evelyn’s hands. In 1945 John Barbirolli put together his second concerto arrangement for his wife to play, this time using pieces by Corelli. Here he selected five movements from sonatas for violin and basso continuo, transcribing the violin part for oboe and elaborating the figured bass of the originals into an accompaniment for string orchestra. In both this work and the Pergolesi concerto Barbirolli took care to preserve the spirit and style of the original compositions. Previous editions of the Marcello recording have carried the information that it is played in an arrangement by Bonelli, though in fact Lady Barbirolli always played her own version of the work.