Brighouse & Rastrick, Fodens Richardson, Black Dyke

Conductors: Alan Morrison, Garry Cutt, Nicholas Childs
2008 Great Northern Brass Arts Festival
Bridgewater Hall
Manchester
Saturday 6th September

The climax to the 2008 Festival came on Saturday night with the Gala Concert. An encouragingly large audience of over 2000 people will have left Bridgewater Hall well pleased by what they heard, but for the featured bands it would have been a slightly different story. 

Shadow boxing

With just a week left before the real fight for glory at Symphony Hall, this set piece of concert shadow boxing didn’t quite leave any of the three fancied contenders sat on their backsides like Amir Khan.

However, it did give a few pointers to which of the trio would have left for their final training camps full of confidence, which one satisfied with progress and which one a little apprehensive that a few pounds of ill disciplined flabbiness needed to sweated off in the gym. 

Pleased

Black Dyke will undoubtedly be the band pleased by the current state of their Open preparations.

A polished, confident set rounded off the long night (it started at 7.15pm and ended three hours later), with Nicholas Childs (now introduced as Musical Advisor rather than a mere MD or conductor) making sure they delivered a message of musical intent to both supporters and rivals alike.

Well merited confidence

Meanwhile, Brighouse & Rastrick will head back to their training ground full of well-merited confidence, after producing perhaps the most assured and prepared programme of the entire day. The boys in purple are close to tipping the scales for Brum in tiptop condition.

Out of kilter

Fodens however know that despite the flashes of real brilliance here and there they seemed out of kilter – it was sloppy at times in fact.

They didn’t get too hurt by leaving their chin out to dry too often throughout their comfortable programme, but come the Open it will be lights out for their chances of taking the title if they let their guard down as often as they did here. Some hard work is needed to get them in prime form for next week.

Brighouse & Rastrick

Brighouse set out their stall with 8 rounds of high class sparring that started with a whip through ‘Le Corsair’, (which seemed to have at least two sex changes in John Maines’s pre and post match ramblings – as well as the audience starting to clap two bars from the end).

Mike Howley then delivered a mature piece of euphonium work on ‘Life of a Dream’, although he wasn’t the only euph player on the day to find the acoustic of the hall did the instrument no favours at all – the clarity of the sound being lost almost immediately it left the bell. A bit of hip wiggling exercise followed with Lionel Ritchie’s ‘All Night Long’. Pensioners with a ‘Wii Fit’ loved this – the sound of clicking aged pelvic bones notwithstanding. 

Stephen Wilkinson produced a touching sense of fragility in ‘I’d Rather have Jesus’ before a cracking piece of red blooded Argentinean ‘new tango’ in ‘Libertango’ by Piazzolla was expertly crafted to suit the budding Joachim Cruz’s in the band by Leigh Baker. 

Gary McPhee was a secure presence on ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ before the audience had their visual (as well as polished musical treat of the night) with a quick workout on ‘Mr Sandman’. To round an impressive workout off, a very sonorous ‘Agnus Dei’ showed that Brighouse had plenty left in the tank with a week to go. 

Fodens Richardson
 
Fodens Richardson started their 7 rounds of prep work with their best ensemble playing of the night in ‘Four French Renaissance Dances’, before a rather uncomfortable ‘Pie Jesus’ duet from Helen Williams on flugel and Alan Wycherley on soprano exposed some ring rustiness.

Alford’s ‘The Thin Red Line’ brought things back on track, despite the occasional nasty slip or two, before John Barber delivered a fine bit of individual sparring with a classy rendition of ‘Blue John’.

That ought to have got the band focused, but the Bourgeois ‘Serenade’ sounded tired and imprecise, whilst the accompaniment to Glyn William’s on ‘New Grandfather’s Clock’ was in a different time zone on occasions. He was great, but the ensemble playing didn’t match his efforts.

That just left ‘Procession to the Minster’ – an old favourite, decently played to finish off an overall performance that lacked a hard edged discipline on what were very familiar comfortable training ground routines. Fodens left the stage knowing they will have to up the ante come next week.

Black Dyke

After the interval came Black Dyke, and although playing within themselves, still flexed their muscles in all the right places just to show their rivals that they were close to peak fitness ahead of trying to reclaim their Open title.

The opening Widow ‘Toccata’ was all flash and flurry of speedy glove work, whilst ‘Capriccio Espagnol’ maintained the breathtaking tempo and was played with a sense of arrogant panache.

The lack of detailed explanation from John Maines about the UK premiere of Wilby’s substantive tuba solo ‘Cyrano’ meant that despite Joseph Cook’s fine effort’s (and without music) the correct sense of tragic nobility about the heroic protagonist with the huge proboscis, that was so obvious in the brilliantly descriptive writing, was lost on the audience. They seemed to think it was more of a lightweight showpiece with comedy interlude – more Steve Martin than Gerard Depardieu in the lead role. 

A fine performance demanded a slightly better informed response.

That left the rather more saccharin coated emotion of the music from ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and a real tour de force display of technical strength on Gregson’s newly amended version of ‘Variations on ‘Laudate Dominum’.

Showboating

If ever there was a piece of pre fight showboating then this was it.

The composer (and his brother, Bram) was in the audience and so the MD (or should that be Musical Advisor from now on?) of Dyke didn’t miss his chance for a bit of pre contest oneupmanship.

Don King couldn’t have done it better, especially as the band rounded off the whole night with another nod in the right direction with the encore, ‘I’ll Walk with God’. With him on their side they could well be walking with a big Gold Shield under their arms too come Saturday night.

That was that then. The pre fight honours went to Queensbury, closely followed by their confident Yorkshire rivals and with Fodens left knowing they had work to do. Amir Khan better take note before his next outing too.

Iwan Fox

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