Conductor: Michael Fowles
Featuring: Bones Apart Trombone Quartet
RNCM International Brass Band Festival
Friday 23rd January

An impressive opening RNCM Festival concert saw Foden’s under an authoritative Michael Fowles explore evocations of the physical, spiritual and even mythical from composers Clare Cope, Paul Mealor and Edmund Rubbra. 

In addition, the earthlier virtuosities of Philip Sparke’s ‘Partita’  were supplemented by the stylistic nuances of Benjamin Britten’s ‘Prelude and Courtly Dances’  from ‘Gloriana’, and the bright chimes of Hermann Pallhuber’s ‘A Fanfare of Bells’.  

Primordial past

The eerie opening to Cope’s ‘The Green Chapel’  acted like a subliminal message from a primordial past - the creaking fissures in rocks revealing a dark narrative of religious repression. Amid the unsettling atmosphere came an ingrained beauty - the immersive writing seeing the Bones Apart Quartet, like sentinel figures, lead both the band and audience into their unworldly realm. 

The eerie opening to Cope’s ‘The Green Chapel’  acted like a subliminal message from a primordial past - the creaking fissures in rocks revealing a dark narrative of religious repression.

The mossy geology of ‘Lud’s Church’ gave the writing a physical softness, underpinned with an unnerving sense of the supernatural which became an echo chamber for the unearthly voice of Alice, the granddaughter of Lollard religious leader Walter de Lud-Auk, accidently killed as the congregation fled from their hiding place.

Both plaintive and impassioned, it led into a crack shot opening to a final section that deliberately eschewed a redemptive ending – instead leaving a telling chill of mystery on the mind.

Reflective lens

A reflective lens of consideration too with Paul Mealor’s ‘Tranquil Abiding’ - an engrossing appreciation of the stillness that underpins the practice of Buddhist ‘Samatha’. 

The chorale ending, an amalgam of mantra and hymnal drew the music to the most satisfying of conclusions – the textured sound still luminescent even as it faded into the air.

The canticle opening, a spiritual song without words, had a slow, emotive tenderness, although malleable in its momentum. It led into a ‘toccata’ of very human virtuosity and dramatic impulses that repeated its demands with dark edged purpose. 

The chorale ending, an amalgam of mantra and hymnal drew the music to the most satisfying of conclusions – the textured sound still luminescent even as it faded into the air.

Incisive appreciation

As he has done with his sympathetic restorations of other ‘classic’ edifices of banding repertoire, Philip Littlemore’s incisive appreciation of the realities, rather than the more romantic notions behind Edmund Rubbra’s ‘Variations on the Shining River’  brought much needed clarity to a work that had previously flowed with stodgy structural undercurrents.

It resulted in a cleaner, more elegant liquidity to the writing without redirecting its path of variant writing.

It resulted in a cleaner, more elegant liquidity to the writing without redirecting its path of variant writing. The poetic inspiration also remained (although tactfully referred to with a nod of scepticism by the arranger), the balances enhanced and coloured naturally. 

Lean culmination

Paul Hindmarsh’s equally satisfying appreciation of the dance excerpts from Benjamin Britten’s three-act ‘Elizabethan’ opera were also presented with informed stylistic understanding - a mix of courtly procedure and patronage, vanity and desire, that didn’t put a foot wrong.

A rousing ‘Partita’  had an authoritative stamp of intention to close – the music paced and styled so well by the MD and ensemble. Admirable stamina ensured the Sparke spotlight was passed between sections and artistic solo leads with only the odd moment of unease. 

The thumping culmination of a lean, musical work that did not have a single bar of unwarranted padding was as satisfying as any heard on the weekend.

Iwan Fox