Concert: Brighouse and Rastrick Band

Just six days after England’s top-ranked band was runner-up at the British Open, the audience this night might have anticipated a light, easy programme, but what followed was top-quality playing of extremely challenging repertoire under the expert direction of David King.

Defying traditional brass band concert programming, a breezy introduction via Peter Graham’s Prelude on Tallis was followed by Paul Lovatt-Cooper’s Vitae Aeternum, which takes its inspiration from three Salvation Army hymns. Brighouse’s dexterity showed here and the beautiful middle movement, led by Mike Eccles on flugel, was the first of many special moments.

An abundance of quality soloists was also on display, starting with the young Australian that recently switched from the principal cornet to soprano, Dominic Longhurst, whose expressive playing and tone in Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes left the audience breathless.

A brief jaunt through Percy Grainger’s Molly on the Shore, taken at breakneck speed, led to Sheona White in top fettle for John Golland’s beautiful Ballade, the performance dedicated to Sheona’s former flugel partner at YBS, Iwan Williams, who passed away during the corresponding weekend in 2012.

Rounding off the first-half with Edward Gregson’s fiendishly difficult Of Distant Memories, the expansive lyrical lines of which really suited the Cathedral’s acoustic, the performance of the piece was hallmarked by special contributions from Kathleen Gaspoz and Philippe Schwartz.

With the same quality evident in the second-half, Tchaikovsky’s rousing The Little Russian opened followed by John Iveson’s Charivari: A Latin Fantasy, in which the faultless technique and lyricism of Brighouse’s first female principal cornet, Kathleen Gaspoz, wowed the audience, before she was joined by the experienced Rob Westacott and repiano, Jamie Cooper, for The Bells of St. Mary’s.

Kathleen also featured in the next two numbers - Elgar’s lyrical Nimrod and for the extremely difficult cadenza in Friedman’s Slavonic Rhapsody No. 2, David King expertly leading the band through the piece musically, reminding why he is one of the best of his kind!

With faultless ability and technique, euphoniumist Philippe Schwartz was the final soloist of the night with English Variations on Rule Britannia, before a rousing finale of The Salvation Army’s popular Turris Fortissima and, of course, the band’s Floral Dance.

GORDON RATCLIFFE

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