The Nationals 2015

Chris Thomas reviews Highlights from the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain and the Pre-results concert, featuring Flowers Band, conducted by Paul Holland, at the Royal Albert Hall.

The Nationals 2015
Doyen: DOY CD356

The annual feast of winning performances from the National Finals is always one of the year’s most anticipated CDs, not least
by those bands whose victorious performances have been preserved for posterity.

However, this year’s disc holds particular interest for two reasons.

Firstly, all five test-pieces are by living composers, a point that
both emphasises and celebrates
the wealth of creative talent at work within the world of brass bands whilst secondly, in what was a remarkable ‘National’ series for Wales, four of

the five winning performances are by Celtic bands - a very special feat and one that is justly highlighted within these pages as one of BBW’s highlights of the banding year.

For Section 4 victor, Usk under Jeff Jones, Dan Price’s Visions (a work that, by happy coincidence, celebrates the Welsh town of Briton Ferry), is conveyed in colourful fashion notable for its precision
of ensemble on a test-piece that challenged the bands to the limit.
In Section 3, Houghton’s winning rendition of Oliver Waespi’s attractively melodic The Graces of Love is a model of rhythmic and stylistic clarity, capturing the essential dance-like style of the music with aplomb, whilst the Section 2 winner, Ebbw Valley Brass, continued its march through the ‘National’ sections under Gareth Ritter with a spirited, thoughtfully-constructed account of Stephen Roberts’s The Snaring of the Sun.

In Section 1, Kenneth Hesketh’s The Alchymist’s Journal emerged
as a tricky piece to pull off, although Goodwick’s winning performance under Matthew Jenkins proved, beyond doubt, that Goodwick is was a Championship Section band in
the wings for 2016, whilst reliving Cory and Philip Harper’s breathtaking reading of Thomas Doss’s Spiriti is
a musically intoxicating experience, the performance brimming with atmosphere and precision.

It’s all capped off with a triple
bill by Jonathan Bates, drawn from Flowers’s entertaining pre-results concert, the undoubted highlight of which is David Childs’ performance of Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen in what is a jaw-dropping demonstration of technical reworks.

With Christmas close, when listening time will be on our hands, the Nationals 2015 is a release that will rekindle memories of ve very special winning performances.

Programme 5/5
Performance 4/5
Recording 4/5
Presentation 4/5