Set Works announced for Spring Festival
The 2024 British Open Spring Festival test pieces were announced yesterday in Birmingham at the British Open Championships. In its usual home of The Winters Gardens in Blackpool, the 102nd Spring Festival is scheduled to take place on Saturday 11th May. The chosen pieces are:
Grand Shield: 'A Brussels Requiem' (Bert Appermont)
Senior Cup: ‘The New Jerusalem’ (Philip Wilby)
Senior Trophy: ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ (Peter Graham)
Commissioned by Brass Band Oberosterreich as their own-choice work for the 2017 European Brass Band Championships, 'A Brussels Requiem' by Bert Appermont, was originally intended for use in 2020. Including having been the British Open test-piece in 2018 the piece has been performed at elite championship level throughout the world. Presented in four interlinked movements, it is a primary reflection on the shocking terrorist attack that occurred in Brussels in 2016, although its wider context encompasses the aftereffects felt globally following subsequent attacks in Paris, Nice and Berlin which led to an increase of fear and misunderstanding. The four movements are linked by the underlying children's song 'Au Claire de la Lune', which in the first movement is used as a cipher for the loss of innocence. It then moves through a disturbed second section as hell descends, before a minor-coloured chorale leads into a paean of grief and pain. However, the work closes in hopefulness; a search for meaning, optimism and even childlike fun as the nursery tune is recalled before a fierce, passionate climax.
Commissioned by the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain and first performed in 1990, ‘The New Jerusalem’ was revised for use as the set-work for the 1992 National Championships of Great Britain. It has since become one of Philip Wilby's most revered compositions and has been performed throughout the contesting world. The work was inspired by a quotation from the Revelation of St John, “And I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth; for the first Heaven and the first Earth were passed away.” The composer states, "For a moment, the prophecy of St John's Revelation was suddenly highlighted in a new and quite unexpected way. The off-stage fanfares*, the turbulent nature of a large proportion of the band music and above all, the piece's life affirming end may all be seen as an optimistic vision of that social and religious rebirth". *The contest organisers will issue directives for this element of the work.
Peter Graham's work, 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' was originally written for the Black Dyke Band to perform at the 2005 European Brass Band Championships. It is inspired by Jules Verne's 1864 adventure novel 'Voyage au centre de la terre' which through diary entries of Axel, the young nephew of Prof Otto Lidenbrock, tell of his expedition to reach the core of the Earth. The incredible tale is recounted in a series of nine interlinked chronological 'symphonic scenes for brass and percussion'.
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