When in 2011 Håkan Hardenberger introduced the work that Rolf Wallin had composed for him, it was known simply as a trumpet concerto, though in his programme note for its UK premiere, Wallin did reveal that, as he was a trumpeter in his youth, the piece had inevitably become autobiographical. Now he has retitled it, explicitly connecting those memories with the myth of the Fisher King, and, he says, with “visiting dark places … low places”. Even without the subtext, though, it’s a hugely effective concerto, which brilliantly exploits Hardenberger’s exceptional virtuosity and conjures some striking images out of the orchestra. The vivid performances by the Bergen Philharmonic under John Storgårds show how Wallin’s instinctive ear for sonority was already evident in his earliest orchestral piece Id, from 1982, even though many of its musical ideas seem rather routinely rhetorical, while Manyworlds, from 2010 (which is also included here in a version with accompanying video by Boya Bøckman, is intended by Walllin as a musical portrayal of the idea of the multiverse, though once again it stands up well as an abstract orchestral work in its own right.
