Walter Meyer wrote regarding the Brandenburg #2:

>Is the use of piccolo trumpets (of which I had not previously heard) the
>reason that modern performances are less likely to sound out of tune as
>they did in the 50s or are natural trumpet players simply more capable now
>than then?

Perhaps both are true, though performances with a natural trumpet in the
1950s were probably pretty few and far between.

Even now, using a modern valved piccolo trumpet may get you better in tune
for all the notes versus a natural trumpet, no matter how well the latter
is played.  But there's little doubt that the *average* in natural trumpet
playing has made pretty decent strides since the 1960s, as there are simply
many, many more very good players around.  There has to be in order to
serve all the HIP ensembles that now exist!

That doesn't mean that good playing wasn't available 30+ years ago.  I
tend to recall that the trumpet playing in Harnoncourt's (first?) set from
the 60s was pretty raw, and slowed down the tempi considerably in that
performance.  But around the same time, the Collegium Aureum put out a set
of the Brandenburgs with trumpeter Edward Tarr in #2 that is even now a
phenomenal performance.

Bill H.