A trumpet isn’t just for Christmas…

It is strange how many musicians, even leading ones, come from homes without
music. Out of the blue ,Hakan Hardenberger, the only son of totally unmusical parents in
a country district of southern Sweden,has at the age of 30 established himself as unique
among the world’s trumper-players today.

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Recently in one of the London’s premier concert halls he played the Hummel
Trumpet Concerto, something of a party-piece for him, while on television a whole
feature was devoted to his world and development, filmed both here and in Sweden.
Born near Malmo, he owes his career to the accident of a Christmas present when
he was only eight.

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The success of the gift was instant. The boy never stopped playing. His mother
managed to contact the second trumpet-player in the Malmo Symphony Orchestra, whom
she persuaded to give her son lessons.

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There the mature Hardenberger has to draw a line between himself and his
teacher. ”The trumpet is so primitive an instrument. ”he explains ,”that you can’t build a
trumpet that is acoustically perfect. Whatever you do, it will have imperfections. Besides,
you can’t find two mouthpieces exactly the same .To me it is a matter of getting to know
the imperfections and making a relationship with them.”

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And unlike the great British contender among virtuoso trumpet-player, John Wallace,
who developed originally from a brass-band background and then through working in
orchestras, Hardenberger has always thought of himself as a solo artist pure and simple.

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His parents gave him every chance to practice, and went along with his ambition
to make trumpet-playing career. It was then a question of where, at 15,he should be sent
to study .America, Bo Nilsson’s first choice, was thought to be too far away and too
dangerous, which meant that he went instead at the age of 16 to study in Paris with Pierre
Thibaud. Thibaud confirmed his prejudice against going into an orchestra, saying that
“Playing in the orchestra is like digging in the garden”.

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 Thibaud suggested that he should enter the competition” just for experience”.
Hardenberger learned the pieces for the first round only ,but he won through to the
second. Luckily he already knew most of the pieces in that round too, but on getting
through to the final he was faced with a concerto that had already daunted him. He didn’t
win first prize that time, but he enjoyed the performance, realizing that though he” played
like a pig”, people did listen to him.
Quoted like that, Hardenberger’s realism about his work and his career may sound
arrogant, but that would be a totally false impression. Thoughtfully he refuses to try and
analyse what such a gift of communication might consist of, as” You risk destroying it in
trying to explain. The power of the music lies in the fact that it can always move people”

A. From the very start Hardenberger seems to have had the gift of finding the right
compromise and making that relationship. Without any sense of boasting, he
explains that even in his boyhood years the characteristic Hardenberger sound
was already recognizable ,”the first thing I acquired”

B. He is always anxious to extend his repertory. Hans-Werner Henze is the latest

composer to be writing a piece for him, while on other records he has unearthed
rare works from the 17th and 18tn centuries.

C. He was objective enough about himself to know that he played the trumpet better
than others of his age ,but it was only at the end of the first competition he
entered, at the age of 17 during his first year in Paris, that he came to realize that
in addition he had a particular gift of communicating.

D. His father, unmusical but liking Louis Armstrong’s playing, had the idea of giving
his only son a trumpet. Being a serious man, he didn’t pick a toy trumpet, but took
advice and bought a genuine grown-up instrument.

E. His record are continually opening up new repertory, not just concertos by long-
neglected composers of the baroque and classical periods, but new words too.
When you meet him, bright-eyed and good-looking, he seems even younger than
his years, as fresh and open in his manner as the sound of the trumpet.

F. Bo Nilsson was an up-and-coming musician, and at once spotted natural talent.

Hardenberger consistently blesses his luck to have got such a teacher right from
the start, one who himself so obsessed with the trumpet and trumpet-playing that
he would search out and contact players all over the world, and as a “trumpet
fanatic” was “always looking for another mouthpiece”.

G. From early boyhood he had as a role-model the French trumpeter, Maurice Andre,
another player who bypassed the orchestra. The boy bought all his records, and
idolized him.

Time: 20 minutes