Charles Schlueter is the cultivated principal trumpet of the Boston Symphony Orchestra who has maintained a distinctive solo career in the States alongside a strong pedagogical profile. These Classical trumpeting war-horse concertos receive an authoritative and considered approach, one predicated on a full, round sound but never over-blown.

Schlueter’s Bostonian sensibilities are immediately noticeable in an especially elegant reading of the Haydn, though he is handicapped musically by the mediocrity of the Neruda (where no dialogue between trumpet and orchestra occurred to this most klein of kleinmeisters) and the four-square, choppy playing of the orchestra; this is a work which even with its original ‘corno da caccia’ solo instrumentation only survives by the skin of its teeth.

As for the highly agreeable strains of the Hummel, this is a decent, smooth and generally conservative reading but if you are looking for something a bit different Crispian Steele-Perkins expertly presents ‘salon’ geniality on an original-style ‘keyed’ trumpet with far greater expectancy and character than Schlueter. The Tartini is the showpiece here but it lacks the virtuosic sparkle, humour or pure instrumental elan of earlier recordings by John Wallace and Maurice André (both out of the catalogue at the moment). There are also intonation lapses which shouldn’t have been allowed to pass. Not a disc I’ll be to returning to, when all is said and done.