Jorg Konigsdorf, Tagesspiegel Berlin
June 13, 2009

Alison Balsom once criticised her colleagues for concentrating too much on playing high notes correctly at the expense of good music making. The English star-trumpeter demonstrated that this does not have to be the case with Haydn's Trumpet Concerto at the Berlin Konzerthaus. Every note is music and no phrase is too short for her to fill it with expression. Her sound is soft and cantabile - not unlike her teacher's, Hakan Hardenberger. She tries to fill melodies with soul and to animate with rhetoric, just as she does in her outstanding recording with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie.