“Si suoni la tromba!” – “Let the trumpets sound!” This is the title chosen by the sopranist Dennis Orellana, Baroque trumpeter Julian Zimmermann, harpsichordist Diego Ares and cellist Sophie Lamberbourg as they devote their talents to the musical relationship between the human voice and the sound of the trumpet. Baroque music made very frugal use of the trumpet, but with all the more impact when it did. Festive fanfares, glorification of rulers, ecstatic war rhetoric were transposed into sound through this instrument. The use of the trumpet was extraordinarily effective especially in connection with singing.

Dennis Orellana’s youthful soprano voice unites with the clarion sounds of this signal instrument; while the concert includes music by Girolamo Fantini, Antonio Maria Bononcini, Francesco Gasparini, Bernardo Pasquini and Antonio Caldara, it revolves around Alessandro Scarlatti’s 7 Arias with Solo Trumpet, which alternates warlike clarions with jubilant and festive sounds, and the expressive range of the trumpet is enhanced with tender and emotional tones of love and yearning. Occasionally the trumpet has to remain silent, for instance when Caldara’s “Pompe inutile” from Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo sings of the vanity of earthly pomp.