Classic concerts this week. The legendary Maurice André with the Boston Symphony, conducted by Seiji Ozawa in music by Tartini and Tchaikovsky. It was recorded on October 14, 1978.
This was part of a series telecast by PBS with audio broadcast by NPR. Evenings At Symphony was a one-hour presentation of a complete concert. In this case, it’s the second half of the concert from October 14, 1978, where the Orchestra play the Tartini Concerto for Trumpet in D Major (arr. Jean Thilde) and the Tchaikovsky Symphony Number 4. The first half of the concert (not broadcast) was made up of the Hummel Concerto for Trumpet in E-Flat Major and Haydn’s Seven Last Words Of Christ (arranged for Orchestra).
From The New York Times Obituary for Maurice André, written by Margalit Fox in March of 2012:
Maurice André, a virtuoso credited with having transformed the trumpet from a workaday cog in the back of the orchestra into a seductive solo instrument in front, died on Feb. 25 in Bayonne, in southwest France. He was 78.
His family confirmed the death to the news agency Agence France-Presse, declining to specify the cause.
Mr. André, who began his professional life as a coal miner, was esteemed as a trumpeter for his warm, robust tone; lightning technique; and clarion high notes, whose stratospheric reaches could prompt waves of applause from audiences.
What potential for showmanship his gifts entailed was mitigated, most critics agreed, by his sensitive musicianship, which let him spin out lyrical, shapely lines much as a singer would.
By all accounts, Mr. André was to the trumpet what Jean-Pierre Rampal was to the flute or Pablo Casals to the cello: a player whose instrument, long considered a mainstay of the orchestral ark, became, in his hands, the fleet, dazzling tool of a concerto soloist.
Enjoy the concert.
