Matilda Lloyd's New Album Mixes Baroque & Modern Trumpet

In her fourth album, English trumpeter Matilda Lloyd finally matched with an instrument that could keep up with the powerful sound of her horn. With organist Richard Gowers, she has been working on Fantasia: Works for trumpet and organ (Chandos), due out in September 2025.

Matilda Lloyd © Geoffroy Schied

The concept of fantasia dates back centuries, starting in the 16^th century, where it was an instrumental composition without pre-conceived notions, or, in Luis de Milán’s words, a work that came out of the composer’s ‘fantasy and skill’. This open quality of its definition held for the next 300 years. Its root is in a musical idea rather than a musical form.

Musical imagination was what Lloyd charged her modern composers to have: write a modern work for trumpet and organ based on the idea of a fantasia. This was ably answered by Roxanna Panufnik in Echo, written for trumpet in B flat, flugelhorn in B flat, and organ. Richard Barnard came in with At the Borders of Sleep, for trumpet in C and organ. Deborah Pritchard brought Light Enkindled for trumpet in C and organ, and Owain Park produced Warm, Hazy Rain for flugelhorn in B flat and organ.

In between these pieces are works by Baroque composers J.S. Bach and Johann Pachelbel, and Classical-era composers Johann Ludwig Krebs and Giovanni Battista Martini. What’s interesting about the music is that this isn’t Pachelbel’s Canon but rather his Fugue, and two of Krebs’ Fantasias, originally written for oboe and organ and here transcribed for trumpet and piccolo trumpet and organ. The Baroque works on the recording are very much in homage to the late Maurice André (1933–2012), who brought Baroque trumpet works, especially on the piccolo trumpet, to everyone’s living room.

The opening work tells us immediately that we’re not in the ‘same old stuff’. J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.

The fugue is split between the two instruments, with the trumpet taking the highest part and making us hear this fugue in a totally new way. The voices are clear, the exchanges between the voices are interesting dialogues, and a refreshing way of approaching a work that benefits from a new edition.

Matilda Lloyd Performs J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor

Lloyd said she first played this as a brass player when she was at the Junior Guildhall School. From that unforgettable start, we’ve arrived at this new version, created by William Foster.

The modern pieces, listed above, came with the unexpected. Given free rein with the idea of fantasia, the composers produced works that were on the quieter side of a fantasy. Lloyd spoke about the whole process of finding a composer, commissioning the work, and then waiting to see what would come. She was never disappointed, but the whole process of investigating the composers’ idea, working with the composer when certain of their ideas might work a better way on the instrument, etc., all led to a deep involvement in the compositional process.

Richard Gowers

Richard Barnard’s At the Borders of Sleep was. In the composer’s words, ‘inspired by the moment of entering a dream state as one falls asleep, when reality shifts and thoughts become warped and surreal; the impossible seems normal’. While describing that border area of sleep, it also describes the idea of a fantasia. The organ and the trumpet take on many different roles here: sometimes the organ is simply the accompaniment to the trumpet, other times it rises to the fore and takes a solo line. It can also play in a way that a trumpet cannot: with cluster chords, using all the fingers at once.

The variety of trumpet sounds across the recording is refreshing. Trumpets in C, D, and E flat are used as well as two different piccolo trumpets, one in A and the other in B flat. In addition, she plays a flugelhorn in B flat (in her collection since another performance at the Junior Guildhall when she was in a brass quintet for Queen Elizabeth that involved the Thames River, a barge, and, of course, a slight downpour).

Activities around the recording’s launch on 18 September include 3 early-release singles starting in late August, concerts in London and Royal Leamington Spa, and then, in December, the concert premieres of some of the commissioned works.

Upcoming projects include a recording of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with pianist Federico Colli and a performance on BBC Radio 3 of Helen Grime’s Trumpet Concerto, written in 2022 for her teacher, Håkan Hardenberger.

Lloyd’s mix of Baroque and Classical works with newly commissioned pieces continues to expand the world of trumpet music, and we look forward to her next productions.

Matilda Lloyd and Roxanna Panufnik on their collaboration