RNCM Festival of Brass: Grimethorpe Colliery Band

Conductor: James Gourlay
Soloist: Lloyd Buck
RNCM, Manchester
Sunday 24th January

Like Cory, Grimethorpe was absent from the Festival of Brass in 2009, but this year saw the band return to its customary Sunday night slot (last year taken by Brighouse) with James Gourlay at the helm and as diverse a programme as any on offer at this year’s festival.

Star

Of the star offering in the first half of the concert there was no doubt. Concertos for piano and brass band are, as Paul Hindmarsh put it “as rare as hen’s teeth” (how many band enthusiasts are there around who still remember the Radio 3 Bandstand performance of the ‘Concerto for Piano and Brass Band’ by Welsh composer Mervyn Burtch back in the 1980’s we wonder?) but Martin Ellerby’s ‘Cabaret Concerto’ makes a case for the unusual combination with both wit and style.

His ‘Concerto’ takes the form of an entertainment, cast in eight fleeting movements that encapsulate such diverse territory as rags transformed to the composer’s own ends, a theme and ten variations in microcosm and Ellerby’s contemporary take on the poco allegretto from Brahms’ ‘Third Symphony’.

Paintings

The movements are bound by the paintings of James Whistler, each “vignette” taking a musically suggestive title from a Whistler painting without necessarily being a direct musical representation of such.

Unlike his ‘Elgar Variations’ or ‘Malcolm Arnold Variations’, this is Martin Ellerby being completely and totally himself and we would suggest all the better for it. Band, conductor and soloist, the young RNCM student Lloyd Buck, brilliantly captured the humour and style of each variation and as the audience cheered at the end, Lloyd Buck looked utterly bewildered by their delighted response.

We hear that the band have recorded the piece for release soon and it will certainly be a CD to look out for.

Interloper

Roger Steptoe described himself as “a brass band interloper” in his introduction to his ‘Dance Music’, although anyone that has the Naxos recording of tuba concertos by James Gourlay will recognise his name.

Re-constructed from the original work for fifteen piece brass ensemble written in 1976, it proved to be an entertaining and interesting piece which despite its title and lively transatlantic flavoured outer sections, has a haunting slow movement at its heart. Sadly it’s one of those works that might not be heard again for a long time but to have heard it at all was proof of the vital worth of the Festival of Brass.

Roll Call

Bruce Broughton was present to hear his grandfather’s joyous march ‘The Roll Call’ commence the second half before his own music was represented by ‘Covenant’, a typically brilliantly scored response to the hymn ‘Cleansing Fountain’, written in 1830 by Lowell Mason.

The dynamic five note figure that opens the piece and which binds its structure contrasts effectively with the touching simplicity of the hymn itself in a piece that radiates spirit from start to finish.

Anticipated

The band’s performance of Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen’s immensely challenging ‘Riffs and Interludes’ had been much anticipated and although there was undoubted brilliance on display in the playing, there was also the feeling that at times the performance was flying by the seat of its pants.

The drive of the opening ‘Alla funk’ with its metamorphosised Heaton motifs was gripping although it was a real shame that the final bar was marred by a mistake from the sound engineer controlling the electronic effects that resulted in an unwanted echo.

In the slow movement the often torturously exposed solo lines were not without moments of insecurity but the monolithic power of Aagaard-Nilsen’s “mountain” music was awesomely captured against the comparative simplicity of the “songs” from the singing mountain, whilst the musical machines of the final ‘Mechanical Dance Sequence’ were just that, mechanical, complex rhythmic constructions that led to an exhilarating final coda.

Open minded

Even amongst the open minded Festival of Brass audience there were clearly people that found the music difficult but Aagaard-Nilsen’s immensely challenging score is a landmark of the modern brass band repertoire and it is to be hoped that Grimethorpe’s performance might lead to a more open minded attitude to his music than has hitherto been the case in the UK.

The concert was framed by more familiar material in the form of Elgar Howarth’s arrangements of ‘Music for the Elizabethan Court’ to open and ‘Baba Yaga’ and the ‘Great Gate of Kiev’ to close.

With Ursula Jones and Philip’s sister both listening intently it was wholly fitting programming to exploit the link between Grimethorpe, Howarth and the PJBE, in music that has become synonymous with the band and which was despatched in appropriately brilliant fashion.                          

Suitable choice

And so it fell to a Grimethorpe favourite to bring the 2010 Festival of Brass to a close.

So was ‘Macarthur Park’, the piece that Grimethorpe encored when they last played at the Festival and aired to the masses on the Alan Titchmarsh show two days previously a suitable choice as an encore?

In front of an educated brass band audience, numerous eminent composers and Ursula Jones we would say that it certainly wasn’t, but the audience lapped it up anyway, Edward Gregson sat with his fingers in his ears and everyone left the Royal Northern College Music comfortable in the knowledge that Paul Hindmarsh has secured the safety of the Festival for another year.

Roll on 2011.

Chris Thomas          

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