Johann Nepomuk Hummel was known in eighteenth-century Weimar not only as a brilliant pianist and composer, but also as a happy and honest family man who loved the company of other people. Content to leave genius to his moodier contemporaries Beethoven and Goethe, he advised one of his students, “Your purpose is to touch the heart, to instill joy, to delight the ear.” His E-major trumpet concerto may not be the weightiest music ever written, but its cheerful flow of melody does all those things with the effortless happiness of a summer day.

Listen to the third movement, played with fitting effervescence by Wynton Marsalis.