Over 40 years since it was written, Harrison Birtwistle’s ‘Grimethorpe Aria’ still retains its ability to trigger visceral emotional responses from listeners.

Here, as part of the high profile ‘Changing Britain’ series hosted by the Southbank Centre in London, a handful of the audience walked out during its performance; its bleak, uncompromising tonality perhaps not quite what the occasional brass band listener to this ‘celebratory’ cultural series was expecting.

Prescient

Perhaps they should have though: Prefaced by its William Blake quotation and introduction by compere Ian Clayton, it remains remarkably prescient; even if the concert itself was deliberately aimed at linking the seismic fractures in the cultural, economic and political landscape of the mining communities of the country during the years of Conservative government from 1979 to 1997.

Written between the industrial strikes of 1972 and 1974, it is a deeply personal reflection of what the composer saw as a form of unbreakable community social cohesion; an engrossing brass band addendum to his orchestral work of the same era, ‘The Triumph of Time’.

Pessimism

It is also both a touchstone and paean; its funereal pessimism a harbinger of elegiac musical possibilities as well as a future obituary notice of record to the cataclysmic aftermath of the 1984 Miners Strike. It was given a performance of engrossing substance by a band and MD that once again displayed their innate understanding of contemporary musical language. 

Tradition and aspiration

Surrounding it was reference to tradition as well aspiration in the form of a free flowing ‘Le Carnival Romain’, which in 1979 was one of the last occasions a virtuosic transcription of an orchestral overture was regularly used at a major contest, and ‘Cloudcatcher Fells’, that just six years later finally led to new era of major works inspired by the aesthetic rather than the merely technical.

Both were performed with wonderful facility; Matthew White leading the way on euphonium with the famous Cor Anglais solo in the Berlioz firecracker, and Danny Winder a bucolic focal point of subtle flugel tonality in a rendition of the McCabe work of great warmth and texture.

Affecting

Earlier in the day Tredegar had undertaken its first dress rehearsal with the Rambert Ballet for the forthcoming production of the mining inspired ‘Dark Arteries’ production at Sadler’s Wells, and ‘Sadly now the Throstle Sings’ by Gavin Higgins (which forms part of work), with its elegant melancholic phrasing, was a timely reminder of his deeply affecting compositional voice.

True cost

With such evocative musical reflections of political, economic and cultural change, the simple rendition of ‘The Miner’s Hymn’, 'Gresford’ left a bleak but chillingly beautiful reminder in the minds of the audience of the true cost of the mining industry.

In contrast, the rapid Shostakovich ‘Folk Festival’ encore added a neat sprinkling of lollipop sugar to tingle the taste buds of those listeners who had taken the opportunity to open their minds to substantial contemporary brass band music performed with fine authority.

Iwan Fox