Press
Concert & Recording Reviews
Swedish trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger and British percussionist Colin Currie offered a virtuosic and highly polished performance....
|
|
|
For reviews in languages other than English, please contact Hakan Hardenberger's Local Managers.
Press Quotes
"And I know that Håkan Hardenberger is probably the best trumpeter in the world."
Michael Tumelty on The Herald, 27th April 2009 (Concert with the RSNO, Glasgow)
"The most interesting work of the evening, however, was the Divertimento Macchiato, featuring the magnificient Håkan Hardenberger as trumpet soloist.
It goes without saying that Hardenberger played with consummate skill and a great deal of subtlety, displaying every carefully studied nuance of this really interesting work."
Musicweb-international.com, 25th April 2009 (Concert with the RSNO)
"Who plays the violin any more? Perhaps it has to do with the soloist's power of attraction - for years Hardenberger has been by some distance the most popular ambassador of his ever increasing guild. Instead of one of the famous or baroque concerti, Hardenberger played exclusively works of the 20th century, and instead of an orchestra there was the pianist Roland Pöntinen. [...] Anyone who has heard Hardenberger's wittily virtuosic version of two of Ligeti's opera arias will no longer have any fear of new music. With an ease of touch, Hardenerger and Pöntinen combined unrelenting Hindemith with sentimental film music, Piazzola's tangos gain a rich covering of charm, while the violin virtuoso and composer Geroge Enescu's "Legend", related to them, is filled with clear sadness. One reached the piont where it was no longer possible to know what one should be most amazed at. At the fact that a singular trumpeter can even play such a strenuous and difficult programm on a single evening? At the assurance of taste with which Pöntinen and Hardenberger make great music from small pieces? At the courage even to dare it all? Or that an expedition into the uncharted can be so pleasant and easygoing? If classical music were always like this, one wouldn't have to worry about the audiences of tomorrow."
Hannoversche Zeitung, 22th January 2009 (Recital with Roland Pöntinen, Hannover)
"They have conquered the great concert podia and took the audience by storm in the large studio at Maschsee at their Pro-Musica guest appearance. Right from the start with George Enescu, the late Romantic - the variety of coulors and technique were unbelievable, quick bursts of first next to smooth flute tones, the trumpet one moment muted like an oboe, the next blazing like a fanfare. In the Hindemith sonata in particular, Hardenberger's brittle tone captivated with his gently audible drawing of breath - classically strong and clear. Rattling piano and trumpet seqences with dialogues of hissing and mumbling between the soloists abounded in the version of operatic arias from Ligeti's " Le Grand Macabre". Highlights after the interval were the Piazzolla adaptations - the story of the tango, its way out of the bordellos into the cafe and via the nightclubs into the contemporary music of today - virtuoisic and melancholy, lascivious and glamorous. One had long forgotten that it was only a trumpet and a piano playing. "
Hannoversche Neue Presse, 22th January 2009 (Recital with Roland Pöntinen, Hannover)
“Trumpeter Hardenberger sang five arias: “as an angel“, in heavenly heights on the piccolo-trumpet, “in memory“(perhaps of the composer’s jazz ambitions) with jazzy phrasing or as the harbinger of peace (aria della pace) behind a sacredly shimmering curtain of sound made up of bowed cymbal and muted tuba. It ended with a brilliantly high trumpet tone of extraordinarily pleasing, because classical, beauty, a modern happy ending from the mouth piece.”
Kölnische Rundschau, 9th November 2008 (SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg,Köln)
“A higher irony: in Eotvos’ own Jet Stream, one heard music speak for itself most clearly – in the freely improvised Cadenza, which, like the encore improvisation on My Funny Valentine, the wonder-trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger made into a real high point with his warm neon-like sound, laser-precise emotion and impulsive feel for structure.”
TZ, 6th October 2008 (Münchner Philharmoniker, Munich)
It is the trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger who fought against this lethargy. His interpretative brilliance does not need to be perceived – it works by itself. In “Jet Stream”, corresponding to the programmatic claim of a menacing wind chime, the orchestra generated surfaces of sound, sometimes briskly driven on, sometimes gently stagnating, on whose basis Hardenberger’s impressively precise exploration of the very different musical hues could unfold with great presence. Hardenberger created an intensity…
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 5th October 2008 (Münchner Philharmoniker, Munich)
“HK Gruber conducted his new concerto, “Busking”, for trumpet, banjo, accordion and strings and only just premiered in Amsterdam. Star trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger was able to put all of his virtuosity into it, blowing on the detached mouthpiece and making his instrument twang and quack with mutes. A playful piece with pulsating drive, which was enormous fun to listen to. There was much applause and many bravos in the well-attended Alfried-Krupp Saal.”
Der Westen, 23rd May 2008 (German Premiere, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Essen)
“An elegant, above all cultivated sound structure emerged, from which the music could draw free breath – a powerful music indeed, and immensely entertaining. The same went for HK Gruber’s trumpet concerto “Aerial“, written for the fantastic trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger. He attended to the work with humour and a superior creative power, shaping the strikingly romantic dialogue between trumpet and orchestra in the first movement with love and rousing himself to a truly sportive danceability in the second movement with an incessant changing of mutes. New music in a form that all certainly approved.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15th April 2008 (Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Munich)
"Trumpet legend Håkan Hardenberger took care of the Austrian premiere of the “Divertimento macchiato“ for Trumpet and Orchestra by Kurt Schwertsik, once a hornist with the Tonkünstler Orchestra. After the Entrance March, Hardenberger’s tone blossomed out and the soloist, famed for his technical perfection, really got going. The more insistent moments enabled the soft passages of this work full of generic allusions to work fantastically."
Wiener Zeitung, 2nd April 2008