CD: The Pilgrim's Progress
Black Dyke BandDoyen: DOYCD392
CD of the month May 2019
THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
Black Dyke Band
Music DIrector: Professor Nicholas J. Childs
Doyen: DOYCD392
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Any new recording of music by Philip Wilby is a major occasion, but this intriguing new CD by Black Dyke, dedicated to Wilby’s music, is unquestionably more than that. The concept might in part be a 70th birthday celebration for a composer that has given us some of the most loved and iconic major works of the last three decades, but crucially the recording does not simply form a summation or retrospective of the composer’s output to date. Rather, its principle premise is a handful of significant pieces, written during the course of the last five or so years, which traverse a wide variety of themes and inspirations, ranging from landscape to faith.
In Five Rivers: A Pastoral Symphony for Brass Band, the contours and atmosphere of the Yorkshire Dales are celebrated in music that distantly echoes the Lake District of John McCabe, as Wilby paints evocative pictures of the five ancient rivers that ‘form the skeleton’ of the Dales. It is a powerful utterance that moves, beguiles and impresses its grandeur onto the listener in equal measure.
Written for Black Dyke’s flugel horn player, Zoe Hancock, One Star: Sailing West is inspired by a trip on a sailing boat and draws playing of striking technical clarity from the soloist in the first movement, counterbalanced by the free-flowing lyricism of the second, in which the flugel horn lines are electronically enhanced carefully.
The nautical theme is taken one stage further in Beyond Far Horizons: Sailing West - the individual solo lines of which create a skillfully wrought and, at times, complex evocation of Bristol’s seafaring heritage, whilst in Cinema the band is joined by organist, Darius Battiwalla, for a Concerto Grosso that takes as its starting point some of the most common characteristics of film, drawing sounds of ear-opening originality and startling power from the brilliantly utilised combination of band and organ.
Like Five Rivers, The True and Tender North is another miniature symphony that takes its title from the Tennyson poem, The Princess, and utilises Sousa’s march, Washington Post, in its North American connections.
The Pilgrim’s Progress, the pivotal fulcrum of the disc, offers music of potent power, faith and emotional integrity, which takes the words of Bunyon, here spoken in subdued Yorkshire tones by Matthew Routley, and weaves a sequence of contrasting variations built around the Vaughan Williams hymn, Monks Gate, which started life as a traditional sea shanty.
Philip Wilby has long enjoyed a close and productive working relationship with Nicholas Childs and Black Dyke, which communicates itself clearly throughout this CD in performances imbued with empathy, character and, at times, deeply-felt emotional gravitas.
The result is perhaps the most significant CD release of 2019 so far and a recording not to be missed by anyone that values Philip Wilby’s immensely important contribution to brass band repertoire.
CHRISTOPHER THOMAS
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