CD: Pageantry
City of Bradford BandIndependent release
PAGEANTRY
City of Bradford Band
Conductor: Lee Skipsey
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The third CD release by City of Bradford, under the ever-committed direction of Lee Skipsey, is arguably its most significant, given the theme of celebration following the band’s National Championship Final debut at the Royal Albert Hall in 2017. Appropriately, therefore, City of Bradford’s live performance of Herbert Howells’s Pageantry that secured third place at the Yorkshire ‘Regional’ from number one draw, which led to that debut and a highly credible ninth place in London, is the recording’s focus.
The repertoire is eclectic - the opening number, Lionel Richie’s All Night Long, does not initially feel entirely comfortable when heard alongside the immediately following Finale from Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. That eclecticism, however, is really the point of the disc because, as Lee Skipsey says, the aim is to recreate the variety and stylistic contrasts that the band packs into its concerts.
All the band’s soloists perform with aplomb: principal cornet, Dave Karran, in Blessed Assurance; solo euphonium, Jolyon Stead, in a lyrically-poised Lament from Karl Jenkins’s Stabat Mater; and solo horn, Tim Pool, in a reprise of Barbara Streisand’s Evergreen, played with stylish élan.
Wilfred Heaton’s wonderfully idiosyncratic march, Praise, gets a spirited airing, whilst a subtly nuanced rendition of Eric Whitacre’s Seal Lullaby provides contrast and counterbalance alongside the light-hearted spirits of Lew Pollock’s That’s A-Plenty.
Aside from the soloists, however, the greatest interest revolves around Edward Gregson’s Variations on Laudate Dominum, here given a reading of bracing spirit and character as well as, of course, the aforementioned Pageantry. The live contest recording of the latter does reveal a few blemishes, but also epitomises the sheer energy and commitment that City of Bradford’s MD brings to everything he does with a band that he has personally steered from Section 3 to the top.
The breadth and majesty of Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral concluding the disc, heard in an arrangement by William Himes, is certainly impressive, if perhaps a touch predictable. Yet there could be a no more fitting musical metaphor for City of Bradford’s remarkable journey through the sections, to the hallowed temple of Kensington, than this.
CHRISTOPHER THOMAS
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