EMI's new recital series, Virtuosi, celebrates outstanding British soloists of which this presentation of John Wallace is the fourth to be released. The trumpet struggles to compete with the likes of the clarinet and flute (to name two instruments featured so far in the series) for outstanding solo music but Wallace has craftily arranged a programme which represents the lopsided reality of the trumpet's baroque and twentieth-century pedigree in as variegated a way as possible. In purely musical terms, Enescu's smouldering Legend and Eben's wonderfully evocative Chagall Windows can rate as fine pieces without further justification; this is music in which Wallace's gleaming and unwavering tone finds itself most effectively employed. In the Enescu, the woolly tone of Marsalis discounts his version as a contender and it is a pity that Hakan Hardenberger's honed and cornety interpretation is currently unavailable (Philips, 1/90). But 'legend' does, after all, imply something epic and granite-like and Wallace's highly contrasted and jagged reading has no match in this respect. Petr Eben's Windows are inspired by four of Chagall's 12 Jerusalem windows and this is arguably the most effective piece to date written for trumpet and organ. Simon Wright, who turns his hands expertly on any keyboard instrument, is a superb partner for Wallace who himself produces an extraordinarily moving performance of this atmospheric 25-minute work. The magnificent organ of Westminster Cathedral and the slightly eerie spaciousness of its domes is exploited to its fullest potential with soft sounds from both players which project far greater rhetorical meaning to proceedings than Guy Touvron's less immediate, if more poetic, reading. When it comes to power, Wallace brings all the experience of an orchestral principal trumpet to bear and the consummate ''Golden Window'', in particular, is thrilling.
Of the remaining pieces, the Fantini sonatas are the only pieces I could have lived without: these count amongst the earliest (1638) solo trumpet works but ideally require the imperfect nuances of the natural trumpet to illuminate a pioneering spirit amongst simple chordal progressions. Not so with the splendid Tartini Concerto which, although a transcription of a violin concerto, is aesthetically everything a piccolo trumpet could hope for: high and flexible passages combined with soft and lyrical melodic sections. Wallace and Wright again make a perfect team, this time in a highly unusual trumpet and harpsichord duo. The witty Francaix and the cornet pieces by Arban and Hohne are executed with customary panache to cap a distinguished achievement.'