The National Youth Wind Orchestra of Great Britain

Conductor: James Gourlay

La Madeleine Church, Paris.
Sunday August 12th 2001

Paris in August; sun filled days, 70 degrees, fine wine, great food and the best female company a man could hope for. It's a hard and tortuous life I know, but someone has to do it and I'm buggered if I'm going to miss the chance to be surrounded by all things beautiful and French so I can stay at home and go to band practice on a Friday night.

By some freak coincidence however, the National Youth Wind Orchestra was playing at the beautiful La Madeleine Church, which is not far from the very centre of the city and happened to be opposite the hotel we were staying at. So, after a trip to Versailles in the morning and a lunch of quite unimaginable splendour we caught the opportunity to listen to them in the church where Saint Saens once played the organ and where Chopin's famous Funeral March was first performed. (Who said we didn't try to educate you eh?)

The Church has was constructed after the Emperor Napoleon wanted a place to celebrate one of his victories and was completed a few years later to the original design in the form of a Greek Acropolis Temple. (Rectangular in shape with lots of pillars supporting a flattened triangual roof). It's decorated in the OTT style only the French can get away with the acoustic belonging in the Royal Albert Hall class before it had the mushrooms fitted. (Great for funeral masses and the odd choir, but pretty hopeless for anything else).

James Gourlay conducted a concert that featured a pretty serious mix of items from the Vaughan Williams "English Folk Song Suite" to Martin Ellerby's "Clarinet Concerto" and "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Mussorsky. In addition they also performed the "Henry V Suite" by Walton, which given the nature of the subject matter (a crushing defeat of the French team at Stadium Agincourt by Henry and the lads) was a brave choice.

The acoustics spoiled much of the detailed work, but it was interesting to hear the different colours and textures a wind orchestra brings to a performance. It may not be a sound that is particularly thrilling to hear, but give me clarinets any day instead of a section of scratchy violins. The brass boys and girls enjoyed themselves and you can see why there is a trend in schools towards these types of ensembles. The instrumentation is fairly fixed and you get a fair standard of performance pretty quickly and the schools don't have to fork out on expensive instruments, as many pupils will be able to afford their own. Brass bands better beware – this is the taste of things to come.

The Vaughan Williams was nice to listen to and the Henry V Suite brought the odd grumph and groan from the more patriotic French in the fair sized audience, but the highlight of the half was Martin Ellerby's "Clarinet Concerto" superbly performed by Linda Merrick. Ellerby is no stranger to brass bands with his "Tristan Encounters" used a few years back at the Masters, and this music was both accessible and easy to the ear.

Back came the band to finish off proceedings with a fairly rollicking romp through the "Pictures At An Exhibition" which featured some impressive brass and percussion work throughout.

The other highlight of the concert was James Gourlay. He is one of the most elegant conductors to watch with a superb baton technique and nothing that he does is overdone or exaggerated just to make a visual show. He brought a degree of finesse and clarity to his direction that must have been a joy for the young players to follow and he was rightly acknowledged by a standing ovation at the concerts end. He is a musician to the tips of his toes.

So even though we were 350 miles from Wales, in the heart of the most elegant and beautiful city in the world, we couldn't quite get away from brass bands. Still, afterwards, we were able to catch a riverboat down the Seine, drink a St. Emillion 86, and relax at a pavement café by the Louvre and watch the world go by – things you cannot do after band practice in Tredegar on a wet Sunday night. As I said – it's a hard life.

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