RNCM Festival Programme

The programme for our performance at the RNCM Festival of Brass (Sat, 23 January 2010, 3pm)  has been released.

Brass Triumphant - Gareth Wood

A four movement work, commencing with a fanfare to “Ton Temperance”, the band’s original name, the music looks back to the writing of former times, with strong dynamic contrasts and effective writing for the band’s trombone section: a homage to the past but with a modern twist.

The second movement is a sardonic dance, full of malevolent energy and agressive, but intricate rhythmic writing.

The following movement, featuring the smooth euphonium of David Childs, depicting the mist-shrouded 'Afan Valley', and also features expressive playing around the stand, not least the delicate pianissimo at the close. 

The finale is something of a tour de force with technical challenges for the whole band, including the four-strong percussion section, and crisp, rhythmic playing throughout.

Euphonium Concerto - Karl Jenkins

The new 25-minute concerto is cast in four movements: The Juggler; Romanza; "It takes two ..."; and A Troika? Tidy. Jenkins comments on composing the work: "It's been a privilege to write a concerto for such a virtuoso performer. I've known David for a few years and was hoping this opportunity would happen. As is my wont, I've endeavoured to make the concerto somewhat quirky and 'off the wall'."

In addition to the orchestral version, arrangements of the Euphonium Concerto are planned for brass band and wind band. The Euphonium Concerto will receive its US premiere in the wind band version at Carnegie Hall in New York on 26 March 2010. Both performances are with David Childs as soloist

Circius - Wind of the North - Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen

Aagaard-Nilsen grew up in Kabelvåg on Lofoten in northern Norway. From 1986 to 1990 he studied at the Bergen Conservatory of Music (now known as the Grieg Academy) and at the University of Bergen.[1] From 1990 to 1994 he worked at the Bergen Conservatory as a teacher of contemporary classical music. Furthermore, he was leader of the Autunnale-festivalen - (Music Factory and Autunnale), also in Bergen. In 1992 and 1993 he arranged and composed for the Forsvarets Stabsmusikkorps Vestlandet - Norwegian Army Band, Bergen (NABB), writing, among other works, Arctic Landscape. In this period Aagaard-Nilsen wrote many works for wind band and brass band.

Aagaard-Nilsen works as conductor of various school and amateur orchestras, and also as a teacher as the Manger Folkehøgskule. He founded the forum Av garde together with Ketil Hvoslef, Jostein Stalheim and Knut Vaage.

As a composer he has written for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, wind band and brass band.
 

The Maunsell Forts - John McCabe

The Maunsell Sea Forts are military defence structures from the Second World War, designed and built under the supervision of Guy Maunsell. There were three in Liverpool Bay, not far from Hilbre Island and now no longer extant, and five in the Thames Estuary between the North Kent and Essex coasts. Of these last, one was dismantled in the early 1960s, but the other four still stand, buffeted by the sea and the winds, as a reminder both of great engineering inventiveness and of the grim circumstances which necessitated the use of that skill. They form two types: a large single superstructure atop two huge cylindrical legs of concrete (Knock John is of this type), and a collection of metal tetrapods topped off withy single buildings used both for living and keeping watch for enemy aircraft and ships. These groups are connected by what must have been quite hazardous walkways, open to the elements though with guide rails for safety. The tetrapods are especially fascinating, resembling as they do nothing more than the towers in H.G Wells’s The War of the Worlds, but Knock John is also massively impressive.

This work was written after a boat trip around here of the Thames Estuary forts, leaving from the North Kent coast (from where, on a really clear day, most of them can be seen with the naked eye): Knock John, Shivering Sands and Red Sands. It is subtitled Nocturne for Brass Band because the work is framed by quiet music reflecting both the atmosphere of mystery that stuck me so vividly, and the fact that it would have been at night that the greatest danger came. It was, as it happens, an exceptionally fine and calm day when I made my trip, but one’s imagination can very easily conjure up a greatly different atmosphere. Formally, apart from the slow opening and closing sections, the music consists of a kind of rondo in which, however, the meat of the invention lies in the two episodes (the second a fast passacaglia), with the fanfare-like Ritornello (heard three times) binding the structure together.

The Maunsell Forts was commissioned by the BBC for the 2002 Open Brass Band Championships. A word must be said about the ending of the piece: it is, so far as I know, highly unusual for a contest piece to end quietly, as this does, but it would have seemed less honourable to write a work finishing with a loud and probably triumphant conclusion, in view of the subject-matter. The Thames fort still stand, as a memorial as well as intriguing and remarkably affecting artefacts, an unexpected page of recent but not yet forgotten human history.

© Copyright 2002 by John McCabe

Titan's Progress - Hermann Pallhuber

 This was the test-piece at the 2009 British Open that saw the Cory Band lift the famous gold shield for the fourth time in a decade.