Wallace Collection in concert

Nicola Bland reviews The Wallace Collection’s appearance at the World’s largest brass band event.

Saturday night at the Butlin’s Mineworker’s Brass Band Festival belonged to The Wallace Collection; a quintet with the added dimension of euphonium virtuoso, David Childs, occupying a guest solo spot on a Duplex Euphonium, led by that one-man exhumer of artistic treasures and trumpet virtuoso, John Wallace.

The Wallace Collection, usually a quintet, but this night a septet including Iain Muirhead and David Childs, has changing personnel, which at Butlin’s numbered: John Wallace (trumpet/Petite Bugle in Eb), John Miller (trumpet/cornet/post horn), Iain Muirhead (cornet/trumpet), Fergus Kerr (French horn/clavicor), Sue Addison (trombone) and Tony George (tuba/ophicleide).

Opening with the first movement of Malcolm Arnold’s Quintet, the five astonishing musicians then engaged the audience with the first movement of Bellon’s Quintet 1, including a French horn with only two valves, before being joined by Iain Muirhead for Miller’s arrangement of Spofforth Hail Smiling Morn complete with acapella singing, as well as by David Childs for both the final movement of Mimart’s Septet and the rousing Finale of Böhme’s Sextet. The quintet performed the Broadway Boogie Woogie from Jim Parker’s The Golden Section and ‘encored’ with Post Horn Galop.

Spliced into the programme was David Childs’ The Grandfather’s Clock on the 1907 duplex euphonium with two bells (during which this young man proved, yet again, that he could play a tap and make it sound amazing) and Tony George’s own entertaining ophicleide solo arrangement with quintet - Ruddier than Cherry.

The entertainment group proved quite different from the usual roof-raising popular fayre cheered on by the alcohol-relaxed Butlins’ nighttime revelers, but it worked. The packed and receptive audience loved it, underpinning that there is no need to ever ‘dumb down’.

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PHOTO: Wallace Collection on stage at Butlin’s