Leyland Band

Conductor: Jason Katsikaris
Soloist: Katrina Marzella, Sara Burn, Zoe Hancock
Bridgewater Hall
Saturday 5th September

In terms of musical content Leyland provided the most substantive programme of the day at Bridgewater Hall.

Ambitious

An ambitious selection by Jason Katsikaris saw serious works from composer’s Simon Dobson, Philip Sparke, Nigel Hess, Andrew Baker and Herman Pallhuber, which included two premieres and the forthcoming British Open test piece.

On a day when rivals kept their full armoury in their lockers, Leyland came out with all guns blazing – for the vast majority of the time hitting the prescribed target with admirable accuracy, but on a few occasions the choices were unable to hit a cow’s arse with a banjo.

Heavyweight hits

The hits though were heavyweight blows – and had the punching power and accuracy that had the stamp of prospective Open challengers about them.

The opening item, ‘The Dreaded Groove and Hook’ was a corker – full of drive and rhythmic precision, the funky dislocated beat patterns thumped out by an impressive bass end (who were on good form throughout) and aided by agile soloists – especially the sparkling flugel.

Soufflé

Katrina Marzella followed with the world premiere of ‘Scaramouche’ – a bit of a musical soufflé for baritone from Philip Sparke – all air and topping but very little of substance to get your teeth into under the surface.

Delivered with wonderful facility and clarity (a major achievement given the auditorium has such a poor acoustic for upward facing instruments), it still left you feeling rather musically unfulfilled by its close. There was no fandango…

Emotion

Not so Simon Dobson’s ‘Penlee’ – a tone poem of such visceral emotion that you feel drained by its close. Here Leyland delivered with dramatic purpose – aided by a sensitive interpretation from the MD that didn’t overplay the sense of impending disaster.  

The wonderfully composed ending, with its ‘Resurgam’ motif, was held with just the right sense of pathos.

Startling

Zoe Hancock was the guest soloist with the band (reward for winning the Harry Mortimer Solo Award at the recent National Youth Band course) and her startling contributions revealed a performer of impressive virtuosity and informed musicality.

The Himes ‘Ballad’ was delivered with touching melancholy, subtly phrased and shaped without losing the sense of forward momentum, whilst her later ‘Children of Sanchez’ was as hot as a red chilli in an Old El Paso tortilla – powerhouse playing with real verve and style.  This is some performer.

Meandering

Leyland’s programme rather fell away with the surreal ‘Congestion Charge’ by Nigel Hess and ‘Time Remembered’ by Philip Sparke – the former sounding like music to a Keystone Cops film, the latter inducing a sense of amnesia due to its meandering meaninglessness.   Both composers have written way better stuff than this – and we do mean, way, way better.

That led to ‘Singing Stones’ – a bit of Gaelic sounding mysticism from Andrew Baker. This was musical miasma – something in the air, a little too surreal, although quite enjoyable for that, played with a sensitive touch by the diminutive soloist.

Essential elements

That just left ‘Titan’s Progress’ and a performance that had all the essential elements in place – although we suspect Mr Katsikaris won’t be the last MD to fiddle with the time signatures in places.

Warm and witty (and not many MDs will capture the sly humour as well as the Australian) it was a performance not quite at contest boiling temperature – although it was bubbling along very nicely in a lot of places.

It rounded off an impressive set – not always hitting the bullseye, but more than close enough to leave you very impressed.

Iwan Fox

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