CSD Brass
Conductor: Chris Lawrence
Soloists: Freddie Ball (cornet & trumpet), Rosemary Ball (trumpet & soprano saxophone), Joe Orrell (actor)
St. Luke’s Church, Cambridge
Sunday 6th April

CSD Brass’s Spring concert continued its policy of presenting programmes of original music for brass band under the baton of Chris Lawrence.  

In the past three years CSD’s programmes have included Horovitz’s ‘Euphonium Concerto’  and 'Sinfonietta',  the Langford ‘Rhapsody for Trombone’,  ‘The Severn Suite’ and ‘Kenilworth’.  This concert was, if anything, even more ambitious.

CSD are unlike many other brass bands.  Freed from the constraints of contesting, they are able to experiment using different instruments.  The curtain on this Homage to Shakespeare was raised with Sir Arthur Bliss’s short fanfare of the same name, rendered in its original form by five trumpets, three trombones, tuba and timpani.

Shakespearean quartet

Thereafter came four more Shakespearean originals for brass band, each preceded with a monologue, delivered with considerable panache, by Joe Orrell, a third year English undergraduate at Pembroke College, Cambridge.  

Cyril Jenkins’s ‘Coriolanus',  Granville Bantock’s ‘King Lear’,  Ralph Vaughan Williams’s ‘Henry the Fifth’  and William Alwyn’s ‘The Moor of Venice’  were all delivered competently.  

Of these, the Bantock was particularly impressive, the band producing a rich, full-blooded sound in the tuttis.

Of these, the Bantock was particularly impressive, the band producing a rich, full-blooded sound in the tuttis.  In the Vaughan Williams, cornets were again swapped for trumpets, presumably to meet the composer’s preference as stated in the score.  The band also managed to avoid producing the ‘vulgar sentimental vibrato’ which Vaughan Williams so disliked.

Horovitz

Interspersed with the Shakespearean offerings were solos by siblings Freddie and Rosemary Ball.  

Together they gave a lively account of Joseph Horovitz’s ‘Concertino Classico’,  played on trumpets. Individually, Freddie Ball, this time playing cornet, gave a sympathetic account of Rodney Newton’s ‘Cavatina’,  while Rosemary Ball, playing soprano saxophone, was beautifully expressive in the same composer’s ‘Dawn Song’,  revised by Newton especially for this concert.  When the composer also happens to be the band’s honorary president, you can do things like that!

Full house

CSD Brass are not an elite band.  They do not quite have all the qualities which characterise our very best bands, and certainly, at various times there were blemishes of intonation, ensemble and balance.  But that is not the point.  

Most of the elite bands offer concert programmes of major works just once a year, at the RNCM International Brass Band Festival.  Most other bands hardly bother at all.   CSD present two such programmes a year.  Under Lawrence’s direction, they seem to have adopted the maxim “play for the audience you want, not the audience you’re stuck with”.  

They advertise their programmes in advance, stick to the published programme, and as a result play to full houses on Sunday afternoons.

No marches, no air varié solos, no ‘night at the movies’ or ‘around the world’ sets.  They advertise their programmes in advance, stick to the published programme, and as a result play to full houses on Sunday afternoons.

CSD Brass are demonstrating that, contrary to what many bandspeople believe, there is an audience for programmes of major original brass band works.  And it’s a band from Cambridgeshire which is leading the way.  Fancy that!

Alec Gallagher