Mieczysław Weinberg’s wryly acerbic Trumpet Concerto (1967) has fared well on records, with notably fine interpretations by Selina Ott (Orfeo) and Paul Merkelo (Naxos, 1/23), and now we have this riveting new account by Matilda Lloyd. Her connection to the often elusive spirit of the score is evident right from the start, where she turns the obsessively repeating five-note runs into insouciant sneers. And Lloyd and conductor Lee Reynolds take Weinberg at his word, hitting the metronome mark (minim=152) on the nose to produce a sense of manic urgency that feels exactly right.

The crucial flute solos in the second movement, entitled ‘Episodes’, are played with sweetness and purity (presumably by the LSO’s principal, Gareth Davies), and Lloyd matches them with affecting fragility. This is intensely sad music at times, too – try, say, starting at 7'17", where the muted trumpet gives the sense it’s been muzzled. And the finale, with its crazy cadenza that’s a virtual rolodex of quotations from the trumpet repertoire, has an improvisatory feel, as if soloist and orchestra were acting in cahoots.

Lloyd also plays Christophe Schönberger’s half-hour-long Concerto (2022) brilliantly, although the work appears distinctly wan when heard alongside Weinberg’s. In his review of Schönberger’s 2019 Horn Concerto (Willowhayne, 5/22), Guy Rickards wrote that while it’s well-written for soloist and orchestra, ‘the material and expressive profile do not really justify its length’, and the same goes for this Trumpet Concerto. The compelling sense of fragments coming together in the opening is undone by the appearance of a brightly scored yet harmonically bland passage of thematic development (at 1'44"). There are some pretty, Spanish-accented passages in the atmospheric slow movement and some humourous interruptions in the finale, but the episodic overall form ultimately proves frustrating.

The encores are lovely, however. I love the way Lloyd opens up her vibrato at 3'23" in Rachmaninov’s Vocalise, and how she dances through the virtuoso tricks in Goedicke’s Étude with such ease and elegance.