An evening of the trumpet

Georgy Mikhailovich Kaminsky (1939–2002) was born in Leningrad. Kaminsky’s father was a labourer while his mother came from an aristocratic family; her father was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of Kronstadt.
Georgy Kaminsky spent his entire life in Leningrad – St Petersburg. He lived with his family during the siege that took his father, brother and sister. After the war he began to play the trumpet at the district House of Pioneers. At the age of fourteen he entered a music school and was admitted as a pupil to the wind band of the Submarine College.
In 1965, after graduating from the School of Music of the Leningrad Conservatoire, he entered the Urals Conservatoire (class of the famous teacher, trumpeter and composer Vyacheslav Shchelokov). It was Shchelokov who exerted the strongest influence on the young musician, and it was in his class that Kaminsky emerged as both a performer and a teacher.
From his young years onwards, Georgy Kaminsky appeared with various wind and stage bands and symphony orchestras. Over the years, he performed in the orchestra of the Musorgsky Theatre (now the Mikhailovsky Theatre), the stage band of the Kirov Theatre (now the Mariinsky Theatre) and the State Academic Symphony Orchestra under Ravil Martynov.
However, Georgy Kaminsky’s main sphere of activity was always linked with teaching. Many soloists who today perform in orchestras in St Petersburg, Moscow and elsewhere were students of Kaminsky and followers of his school. Many of them have gone on to become teachers themselves and pass on their experience and knowledge to their own students. Georgy Kaminsky was a remarkable representative of the school of wind instrument performance which is a source of pride for Russian music.
Timur Martynov

The wind instrument known as “the trumpet” has been known since ancient times. The trumpet as we know it today appeared in the late 18^th century when natural instruments began to become defunct and be replaced by trumpets with valves and vents. The new-look trumpet had a much broader range and was easier to perform.
As an orchestral instrument the trumpet was first used in the early 17^th century by Claudio Monteverdi in his opera Orfeo. Among the comparatively few trumpet concerti of the 17^th and 18^th centuries is that in D Minor by Leopold Mozart. The “royal trumpets” of Act III of Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin remind us of traditional trumpet fanfares used at celebrations and military parades.
The role of the trumpet as an incredibly important instrument in the orchestra remains so today, although there are not very many solo pieces written for it. Virtuoso trumpeters must make use of all manner of transcriptions of popular works composed for other instruments. These are represented in the concert programme through music by George Frideric Handel, Alexander Scriabin, Reinhold Glière and Rodion Shchedrin, a fantasy on themes from operas by Giuseppe Verdi and a jazz suite...
From the early 20^th century, interest began to grow in using the trumpet as a fully independent instrument. There appeared chamber ensembles featuring the trumpet and concerti for trumpet by Russian and world composers. These include works by Alexander Goedicke (1877–1957) and the young St Petersburg-based composer Vyacheslav Kruglik.
Iosif Raiskin