Firma Melodiya has released new recordings of trumpet concertos performed by Vladislav Lavrik, a soloist and conductor of the Tula Philharmonic Orchestra.
The four concertos written in the 18th and early 19th centuries make up the program of the album and are known to lovers of academic music. All of them were once part of the legendary Timofei Dokschitzer’s repertoire and are still in demand. The concertos by Joseph Haydn, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Johann Baptist Georg Neruda, and Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel reveal the stages of the genre’s evolution, from the early baroque variety to the resultant classical form. In addition to the exquisite refinement inherent in any approach to the legacy of the previous ages, they require special unanimity and like-mindedness of the soloist and the orchestra – these are features of the 18th century style, when music-making was common in the most literal sense of the word, and the figure of the conductor was not isolated from a collective of instrumentalists. This recording demonstrates this very effect, and this is what makes it particularly valuable.
Vladislav Lavrik (born 1980) is a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory where he majored in trumpet and operatic/symphonic conducting. He is a long-term soloist of the Russian National Orchestra, prize-winner of prestigious international competitions, organizer and participant in important concert projects in Russia and overseas. He has been a conservatory professor since 2008. One might as well say that the foundation of his orchestra that was established by the Tula Regional Philharmonic Society in 2017 was a logical intermediate result of the musician’s activities when he came to artistic maturity and was ready for new accomplishments.
The city of Tula’s Philharmonic Society began its history in the 1930s as a concert bureau that arranged tours for artists performing in various genres. The Tula State Choir has existed since the mid-1940s. The collective’s highest achievements are associated with the programs of conductor Iosif Mikhailovsky (the Philharmonic Society bears his name now). Over the decades, the organization has accumulated various collectives. It has had at its disposal two large concert halls and a number of chamber venues since 2013. The establishment of the symphony orchestra consolidated the Philharmonic Society’s position among Russia’s largest concert organizations with promising new projects.
The recordings were made at the Tula Philharmonic Society in 2022 by sound engineer Mikhail Spassky.
