Trumpet ensemble

Participants

Trumpet ensemble of the College of Music Freiburg
Anthony Plog, Geerten Rooze → Conductor

Program

Works by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Benjamin Britten, Igor Stravinsky, William Schmidt, Ferdinand Donninger and Anthony Plog, among others

From the natural trumpet to contemporary sounds

On January 24, 2025, students and teachers from the College of Music Freiburg will give a trumpet concert. They will play baroque and contemporary works and show how the sound has developed from the natural trumpet to the modern valve trumpet. The program includes pieces by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Ferdinand Donninger's "Musikalische Vorstellung einer Seeschlacht" and contemporary music by Benjamin Britten and Anthony Plog. The US composer, conductor and trumpeter, who taught in Freiburg, helped organize the concert.

Geerten Rooze, lecturer in baroque trumpet at the College of Music in Freiburg, who organized the evening together with Anthony Plog, describes the idea behind the concert: "We want to perform contemporary, mainly American trumpet ensemble pieces and combine them with baroque works. In this way, we will show the entire spectrum of trumpet music from the last few centuries, from the natural trumpet to the modern valve trumpet." The concert begins with baroque music by the Bohemian composer and violin virtuoso Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704). He attempted to explore the limits of the rather quiet and harmonious sounding natural trumpets of his time. "His compositions were groundbreaking and still sound unexpectedly varied and fresh today because he experimented so much. His pieces, which he had performed by huge ensembles with several choirs and orchestras in Salzburg Cathedral, were larger and more powerful than in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. That's why they were banned by decree by the Pope," explains Geerten Rooze.

Fanfares, contemporary music, naval battle

Students demonstrate how the sound of the trumpet has developed with several short pieces: for example, they play the beginning of Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio with natural trumpets, keyed trumpets and modern valve instruments to illustrate the differences in sound. From the field of contemporary music, they will perform "The Fanfare for St Edmundsbury" by British composer Benjamin Britten, alternating between three natural and three modern trumpets, the "Suite for Six Trumpets" by Anthony Plog, pieces by US composers William Schmidt and Burt Reynolds and a fanfare duet by Igor Stravinsky. The final piece is Ferdinand Donninger's famous "Musical Imagination of a Sea Battle", which is performed by eight trumpets and timpani. "It's a wonderful piece: the setting of a naval battle from a time when sailing ships fought each other with cannons. We play some parts of it and present it so that the audience always knows which part of the naval battle is being played," says Geerten Rooze.