Bernd Alois Zimmermann

Trumpet Concerto

Jazz was for Bernd Alois Zimmermann a 'musical constitution of being', a 'branch of art sui generis'. The Trumpet Concerto, with its big band allusions of the 1950s, unites the categories of jazz music and art music. It moves in the border area between exact notation and dodecaphonic pitch organization on the one hand and an improvisationally free ductus on the other - a dialectic that preoccupied Zimmermann throughout his life in connection with the integration of jazz into orchestral music (or vice versa?). The spiritual Nobody knows takes on the role of a classical cantus firmus: first introduced in the solo instrument - above the walking bass of the double basses and the third-octave pendulum of the Hammond organ, which is used here for the first time - it permeates the individual instrumental groups in the present audio sample.