Vladislav Lavrik

This recording captures Lavrík’s refined and authoritative interpretation of the Trumpet Concerto by Mikhail Pletnev, realized in close collaboration with Sergey Nakariakov (trumpet) and the Rachmaninov International Orchestra during sessions held in Bratislava, January 2025.

A remarkable aspect of this project is the presence of composer Mikhail Pletnev himself**, who attended the recording sessions, offering artistic insight and shaping key musical decisions. His direct involvement added a unique depth to the creative process, further highlighting the high artistic level of the collaboration.

Under Vladislav Lavrík’s direction, the orchestra delivers a performance of striking clarity, expressive breadth, and stylistic precision. Lavrík’s musicianship and his ability to inspire the ensemble create an ideal setting for trumpet virtuoso Sergey Nakariakov, whose interpretation shines with brilliance and emotional resonance.

The project was produced under the experienced supervision of Executive Producer Job Maarse, ensuring uncompromising artistic and technical quality. Insightful liner notes by Isabel Herzfeld illuminate the musical context, while recording photography by Robert Niemeyer captures the atmosphere and intensity of the sessions.

This album stands as a testament to Vladislav Lavrík’s distinctive conducting voice and to the exceptional synergy between conductor, soloist, orchestra, and composer.

Recording: January 2025, Bratislava
Official Release: July 2025
Label: San Francisco Classical Recording Company

Critical expression – the Trumpet Concerto Pletnev’s Trumpet Concerto confounds and impresses in equal measure, at first through its coolness and intellectual wit with which the solo instrument and the orchestral voices responding to it send out delicate melodies and variations out into the room. Yet the motifs increasingly reveal their meaning through interweaving and repetition, unfolding a critical panorama of our time. As he does so, Pletnev seems more akin to his great role model, Shostakovich. The solo instrument starts out alone, playing the main theme of a chromatically intricate line of staccato

notes that arduously winds its way up from the depths. Hitting these low staccatos exactly is a precarious challenge for the soloist, but does not sound particularly “virtuosic” and is thus not “rewarding”. The violas pick up on the theme, closely followed by the cellos. A cymbal crashnips this in the bud, but the trumpet plays onward. The violins respond with a three-note motif, which, as an upbeat rhetorical figure with a falling sixth and rising second, seems like a sort of mocking bow. The trumpet soothes with ascending triad figures while the flute and bassoon

Pletnev composed the Trumpet Concerto in one single movement. Its opening part, with the instruction “Moderato”, at most contains echoes of traditional sonata format and is more associative and variational in structure and style. Nevertheless, it holds compelling power, logical stringency and a never-ending arc of tension. It is followed by a deeply tragic “Adagio” in which the trumpet can finally unleash its melodic intensity over a minor-key string tremolo. The bold flute motif at the end of the first movement is an ironic commentary or, as is frequently the case with Shostakovich and in the Trumpet Concerto by his friend Mieczysław Weinberg, a bit of serene cheerfulness to counter life’s adversities. This culminates in a quotation from a Slavic folk song charged with painful dissonance by trumpet, bassoon and violins.

The xylophone taps out loose rhythms between variations, not unlike Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 where, at the end, the xylophone clatters along only to the empty shell from which the soul has fled. Only six minutes in length, the middle part is followed by a rapid “Allegro” with powerful timpani beats asserting the wild monotony of brutal forces as delicately interwoven voices counteract the power of individuality. Melancholic melodies with notes of Russian folklore increasingly blend in.

What ensues is a battle between brutal and transparent elements, and the sudden appearance amidst swirling trumpet figures of the song “Korobeiniki”, a song made famous in the West by the computer game “Tetris”. After this, the trumpet finally plays the triadic fifth motif that the strings had played to set comforting caesuras in the first movement. Yet everything ebbs away into tragedy. The xylophone follows the pale strings, and the flute and bassoon’s repetitions into the void get the last word.

Vladislav Lavrik

Link Music