Anthony Plog

Trumpet Concerto N° 3

The Trumpet Concerto No. 3 for trumpet and brass band uses five paintings of the painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) as inspirations for the various movements. Although Kandinsky was an abstract artist, his paintings suggest certain moods or thoughts, and I have used these to form a sort of architecture for the Trumpet Concerto No. 3.
The first movement, Rowing, has a moving, swinging feel to it, while Dreamy, the second, as the title implies, is a more impressionistic movement, showing different colors both from the ensemble and soloist. It is felt that the third movement, Deluge, is Kandinsky's artistic reaction to the coming of World War 1, and so the music is extremely aggressive and harsh. Movement four, Gravestones uses two different groups of instruments and harmonies to convey both death or grief (muted cornets in chord clusters) and the mysterious or eternal (lower brass in parallel fifths), while the final movement, Rider, symbolizes a move from darkness to light .

Written for and dedicated to Rex Richardson, who is accomplished as both a classical and jazz artist, the Trumpet Concerto No 3 at times uses jazz chords or phrasings in addition to standard classical notation.

Anthony Plog, January 2016, Freiburg i. Br., Germany

Important about notation:
The compositions of Anthony Plog include many passages with accidentals. It is important to observe the international rules for music notation in his works:
1) independent accidentals in one measure do not apply to following measures.
2) accidentals in one octave do not apply to any other octave
3) When accidentals are redundantly repeated in any measure to avoid confusion, they appear in parenthesis (also in small size above the note).

About the piano reduction:
This elementary piano reduction is to be used exclusively as a preparation for a performance of the original work with brass band, and should not be used as a recital piece for trumpet and piano. As such, there are certain passages that, at their very best, are not idiomatic, and those passages are written only to give the pianist an idea of what is in the score for brass band. A. Plog