Prelude

Pennine Brass
Musical Director – Ian Porthouse
Amadeus: AMSCD057
Total Playing Time: 63.27 mins

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Pennine Brass is a good up-and-coming band ably directed by cornet star Ian Porthouse. This is very enjoyable CD that shows many of the band's strengths and indeed why they convincingly won the Senior Trophy at Blackpool in May.

The bright opening track ‘Gaudete' from Rodney Newton immediately shows that the band has a good ‘tight' sound and style. Joy Webb's beautiful ‘Share my Yoke' is well played by Principal Cornet JJ Lees and there are sensitive accompaniments from the band.

Vitae Lux is a great concert number by Norwegian composer Torstein Aagaard-Nielson. It demonstrates that this CD has been well-recorded although the percussion is quite forward in the mix. - not everyone's cup of tea!

Trombone soloist Lisa Sarasini plays Peter Kneale's ‘Blue John' with a full orchestral sound and the piece generally works well. There just seems to be the odd bit of confusion at times about whether quavers should be played ‘swung' or ‘straight'. Slaughter on 10th Avenue is a good arrangement by Sandy Smith and the band shows that it has good strong end-chairs - probably why it did so well in Blackpool.

Track 6 - Finale from Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is arranged as a horn solo by Michael Hopkinson. This for us is the big let-down on the album. Laura Lea is obviously a good horn player but does this piece really work? Some moments are a bit of a scramble and the balance isn't great – why did such a good player pick a piece that doesn't show her at her very best?

I Know Thou Art Mine by Leonard Ballantine is a nice addition. It has a beautiful melody, as you would expect from the Salvation Army repertoire and a nice harmonic structure – we like this! Shine as a Light is another original SA piece, this time from the pen of Peter Graham. There are echoes of ‘Montage' here and there – this is all good stuff. The Band obviously enjoys playing it and this comes across in a bright ebullent performance. Another SA piece follows from James Curnow – Fanfare Prelude. This is a cracking arrangement and would have made a great opening number for the CD.

John Golland's beautiful solo ‘Peace' is well played by soloist Mike Fox. It is maybe a little up-tempo to be totally peaceful, but there you go! The soloist has a nice tone, particularly in his upper register, but the balance is sometimes lost when he goes lower. This is a difficult piece to pull off in terms of balance and tempo. Not totally convinced that they pull it off on this occasion.

The manuscript arrangement of Just a Closer Walk with Thee by Bill Geldard is quite interesting. A Bluesy cornet opening builds up to a typical Geldard Big Band climax. We like it!!

A good old fashioned xylophone solo by Kenneth Alford is well-played by Nick Wallwork and this solo is well-balanced by the engineer! John Golland's arrangement of Deep Harmony continues this traditional part of the disc and features some nice solo cornet work and good well-balanced band playing.

Film music, which seems to pop up on most brass band programmes these days is featured next in a good arrangement by Andy Duncan of James Horner's love theme from Braveheart. Andy seems to be producing a lot of interesting material of late and this works well.

The name of Frank Bernaert's normally strikes fear into your average top section heart (especially bass players!) but his arrangement of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone isn't a bad job. A couple of the links don't quite work, but it is basically effective.

The final track goes again to the pen of Andrew Duncan and his Cartoon Classics is spot on. There is an interesting use of ‘samples' and the arrangement is pretty clever with the use of Pink Panther, The Flintstones and The Simpsons themes etc. This is one of the best arrangements on the album for us.

Richard Grantham

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