Senzoku Gakuen College of Music & Parc & Dare Bands

Conductors: Takeo Yamamoto, Richard Evans, Robert Childs
Llandaff Cathedral
Cardiff
Saturday 9th August

It was tipping it down in Cardiff on Saturday night. A horrible day had turned into an equally sodden night, but the weather still couldn’t dampen the warm welcome that awaited the dripping audience as they made their way into the magnificent surroundings of Llandaff Cathedral – one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in the whole of Great Britain. 

Diaspora

A pretty cosmopolitan crowd with a fair sprinkling of the Japanese diaspora in South Wales, had come to enjoy a long (and it was) night of entertainment provided by both bands. The concert was in aid of the Japanese School in Wales, which has provided the ever growing influx of Japanese workers to the Principality with an educational outlet for well over 30 years.

It was the Welsh hosts that took to the stage first, underneath Jacob Epstein’s suspended ‘Christ in Majesty’ sculpture that dominates the interior of the Cathedrals nave.

Ringers

A bit like the audience who sat listening, the band themselves were a pretty cosmopolitan bunch too, with more guest ‘ringers’ than could be found in the Cathedral bell tower on a Sunday morning.

That said, Richard Evans led the band through a fairly relaxed opening segment, which opened with him evoking the international language that is musical swagger in ‘Imperial Echoes’. Mozart’s ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ followed in a bit of a hotch potch performance, before euphonium soloist Helen Kinder delivered a sympathetic account of ‘Benedictus’ from ‘The Armed Man’ by Karl Jenkins (not old Cyril of ‘Labour and Love’ fame as was written in the programme).

Unseasonable

To finish off their individual contribution, Parc & Dare travelled East, but not quite as far as Japan, with a quick zip around the streets in a smokey old Trabant in the Shostokovich ‘Spin through Moscow’ and ending up with some fairly unseasonable fare (although the Xmas offers are just about out in the shops in Cardiff city centre) with Alfred Reed’s ‘Russian Christmas Music’.

A short break allowed the youngsters of the Senzoku Gakuen College of Music to take to the stage under the delightful baton of Takeo Yamamoto (with excellent help from translator Shoko Morimoto).

The band was formed in 1979 in order to try and accelerate the teaching of British style brass banding in the country, and since 2006, Professor Yamamoto, a true pioneer of almost missionary zeal, has led the 120 or students at differing levels, from freshmen to advanced.

Huge credit

The playing from his band was of huge credit to him. Opening with the slightly surreal ‘March! March! For Brass Band’ by Bin Kaneda, which sounded like a mix of Osterling’s ‘Bandology’ meets Cliff Richard’s ‘Congratulations’, they then produced a fine performance of the interesting ‘Lamentation of Archangel Michael’ by Genba Fujita.

Originally written for wind orchestra, Professor Yamamoto had arranged it for brass band in masterly fashion, retaining the sense of dark introspection and ethereal lyricism.   A further Japanese musical episode followed with a robust performance of Akira Toda’s ‘Japanese Poem’, a triptych of ideas skilfully intertwined, and all underpinned by some excellent percussion work.  

Reprise

That just left a reprise of sorts with Philip Sparke’s ‘Music for a Festival’, which the band had performed as part of the International Brass Band Summer School course in Swansea in the week. Here, Dr Robert Childs again took the baton and allowed the players to express themselves with verve and virtuosity.

Price is Right

That just left the massed band items, and the promise of a fairly early night, but the Japanese companies in Wales had done their best to rally to the cause and there was a quite surreal raffle that took half an hour to complete before the music could start again.

That said, the prizes were well worth winning – from Sony headphones to a top of the range microwave cooker (not a bottle of Asti Spumante or a box of Quality Street here!), and made all the more enjoyable as the young players of the band had never before experienced the very Welsh tradition that is a good old raffle.  It was like the Tokyo version of ‘The Price is Right’ at times, with giggling, but somewhat bemused lucky winners from the band racing up the nave to collect their prizes. 

Enjoyable

That just left the final bit of music and with no real rehearsal time together there was some enjoyable, if rather rough and ready playing, in Curnow’s ‘Fanfare and Fourishes’, the Vaughan Williams ‘English Folk Song Suite’, ‘Jupiter’ from the ‘Planets’ and Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1’.

Vibrato

The latter was played very much with vibrato (and some ear splitting soprano cornet hits and misses) and rather strangely with a few people (English immigrants to Wales for the weekend perhaps?) standing to sing the words and indulge in a bit of pre Last Night of the Proms musical jingoism.  What the Japanese made of it all was anyone’s guess.

With the clock racing towards 10.15pm there was just enough time for a trio of encores under the baton of each of the conductors, so a long, but enjoyable night ended with the Japanese ‘Song of the Seashore’, the Welsh ‘Sospan Fach’ and the international ‘New Colonial’ march.

With that it was back out in the never ending rain…

Iwan Fox

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