The closing concert of Perth Festival of the Arts next Sunday, the annual Brewin Dolphin Festival Concert, will be graced by the presence of two of Britain’s most renowned musical stars, who also happen to be one of classical music’s most famous couples, trumpeter Alison Balsom and conductor Edward Gardner.
Guest orchestra at the closing concert will be the Halle, and Gardner will conduct them in Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. In between these classic orchestral buttresses, Balsom will play one of her party pieces, Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto.
There will also be a third special guest present for the grand, celebrity-kissed occasion, but more of him in a moment.
It’s a coup for the Perth Festival to have secured Balsom and Gardner for its closing concert. This is only their fourth concert together since they became a couple, and each of them, as well as being hugely successful in their individual careers, occupies a crucial place on the British and international music scenes.
Balsom is an out-and-out superstar with a huge career. Aged 31 and originally from Hertfordshire, it’s four years since she was named Best Young British Performer at the Classical Brits. Last year she became the first British artist to be named Female Artist of the Year at the Brits. She has been showered with awards by music magazines and radio stations.
Last September she was the headline act at Last Night of the Proms, viewed worldwide by mega-millions. She has a growing armoury of CD recordings on EMI, the latest of which, not yet released in the UK, is of Baroque trumpet concertos with the Scottish Ensemble, which, when released in Germany earlier this year, roared into the classical charts.
With her silvery sound, she has put the music back into the trumpet as an instrument. Famously, and as a message that should be absorbed by all players of the instrument, she has said: “It needn’t be loud-loud-LOUD.”
With her striking beauty, she has attracted high-profile coverage in the tabloids, glossy mags and popular press, where she was dubbed “trumpet crumpet” (a scenario Nicola Benedetti could tell her a thing or two about).
Meanwhile, Gloucester-born Gardner, pictured left, music director of English National Opera, has been hailed as “the man who rescued opera”. When he arrived at ENO the opera company was, musically and politically, in tatters. He has simply stabilised and revivified a company which had lost a chief executive, chairman and conductor in quick succession, whose chorus was on strike and whose corporate jacket was on an extremely shaky peg with its arts council funders.
So here they come to Perth with the Halle. But who is the third special guest on May 30? His name is Charlie, Charlie Gardner. He’ll be in the wings or thereabouts at Perth Concert Hall. That night, Charlie will be exactly two-and-a-half-months-old, and his proud parents will both be on stage, at the front.
It’s a big night for Balsom. It will be her first concert since giving birth to Charlie in Winchester.
“We are loving being new parents,” she said. “It’s a great challenge and lots of fun. Obviously I had to cancel a few months of concerts, but it’s back to full speed for both of us. The concert in Perth with the Halle is my first concert, post-Charlie: super-exciting.
“My last concert was with the CBSO in late January with Ed conducting. It was an enjoyable project and I was sad to have to stop for a while.”
The project was a set of performances of James MacMillan’s trumpet concerto, Epiclesis, written for John Wallace, a mentor of Balsom, and no mean feat for a seven-months’ pregnant woman to undertake.
Now, with the return to work for both of them, presumably the presence of young Charlie will have an immediate and dramatic effect on their schedules.
“While Charlie is tiny, he will always travel with us. I’m very lucky that I have a job which means I’m only unavailable to him for a short time, when I’m actually on stage,” says Balsom.
“For the rehearsal for the Perth concert, Ed’s parents are going to look after him in Manchester (where the Halle is based).
In Perth my parents are meeting us there and will look after him, and perhaps attend the concert too, one at a time. Fortunately, Charlie seems to like the trumpet practice.
“Both sets of grandparents are only too happy to be involved, and, inevitably, a huge and complex support system will evolve pretty soon.”
With both their careers stellar and taking them off in different directions at the same time, presumably there will have to be compromise negotiations?
“Of course, but we both love the extra challenge in our lives.”
And what of the inevitable pressures from agents, managements, promoters, record companies and the whole panoply of publicity and PR, all of which will be more keenly felt in their new domestic situation?
“I can’t speak for Ed, but I can say that I’ve been in this business long enough now to know that the only way you can be successful is to be totally in control of your own destiny, despite outside pressures, and then commit fully to everything you agree to. It makes for a much more interesting and well-rounded artist.”
And one of the things that Balsom is determined to achieve in her career is an expansion, through commissioning new works, of her trumpet repertoire. It’s been known for a few years that she was itching to ask James MacMillan for a new piece for her instrument.
He has agreed, and will be writing something for Balsom and the Scottish Ensemble (“a wonderful ensemble, always open to new ideas”) which will be premiered in London next season.
She’s just been to hear MacMillan’s new violin concerto, premiered by Vadim Repin with Gergiev and the LSO. “It was breathtaking. James and I have yet to meet up for a discussion about ideas, but I’ve been playing his Trumpet Concerto and totally trust him to write anything he likes for me. The MacMillan project is perhaps going to be one of the highlights of my career. I can’t wait for this.”
The Halle, with Alison Balsom and Edward Gardner, Perth Concert Hall, May 30, 7.30pm.
