RNCM Brass Bands Festival 2023

27 – 29 January 2023

Looking to the future – Celebrating the past

For the first time in three years, the Royal Northern College of Music is delighted to present a full schedule of concerts and conversation for the 2023 RNCM Brass Band Festival. Thanks to the continued collaboration between the RNCM and the country’s top brass bands and outstanding soloists, we can look forward to a weekend of outstanding musical adventure, with no fewer than sixteen first performances complemented by a selection of major works that were new some 90
years ago.

The RNCM’s 50^th anniversary is being marked throughout this academic year and the brass band festival reflects the impact its world class brass and composition programmes have exerted on the wider brass band world. The event would not exist without the intervention of the principal in 1998, Edward Gregson, who brought it to the RNCM when the BBC Radio 3 decided to end its ‘hands-on’ connection with brass bands and thus its annual Festival of Brass. Howard Snell was another influential presence at the college during the 1990s, responsible for establishing the RNCM Brass Band and associated tuition. The work of both will be featured during the weekend, alongside that of current and former composition students.

Among a long list of alumni taking part, Daniel Thomas and Michael Cavanagh of Black Dyke Band and Tom Hutchinson of Cory Band will be presenting new and newly discovered solos. Daniel, with Geneva Musical Instruments, has commissioned a lyrical concerto from Judith Bingham that promises to open up a very different sound world from the current trend for finger-flying pyrotechnics. Tom will be presenting the first performance of an air varié solo that the prodigiously gifted Wilfred Heaton composed when he was just 13 in 1932. The ground-breaking A4 Brass Quartet will present a selection of its bespoke repertoire.

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The RNCM welcomes two of the country’s finest young brass soloists, who both come from a brass band heritage and are now enjoying flourishing careers in the wider music profession. LSO principal trumpet James Fountain will be joining Tredegar Band for a performance on the Hummel Trumpet Concerto in a brass version by John Golland which is preserved in the RNCM archives. Joining 2022 Open Champions Brighouse & Rastrick Band in the final concert of the weekend will be trombonist Isobel Daws. Currently as member of the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic Academy, Isobel will be performing Bramwell Tovey’s dazzling jazzy piece Lincoln Tunnel Cabaret – a tribute to one of the most versatile and gifted musical communicators who did so much to broaden the appeal of brass bands across the world.

This festival was to have marked the 70^th birthday year of Bramwell Tovey, but what was to be a birthday tribute from double National Champions Foden’s Band will now be a more substantial memorial tribute, as Artistic Director Paul Hindmarsh explains: “Such was the regard in which Bram was held by so many, that within days of the announcement of his death, I was contacted by a group of composer friends who had known and worked with him over many years, offering to write short tribute pieces. I contacted two others whose careers Bram influenced, so that each band will be able to offer a short tribute to his life and work. Some of the pieces are already finished and promise to be both poignant and affectionate.”

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Hindmarsh continues: “I have also had the good fortune to read through the short works to be premiered in the concert to be given by RNCM Brass Band and French guest conductor Florent Didier. They promise to be brilliantly inventive and colourful – an appropriate showcase for the gifts and skills of student composers at the RNCM and beyond.” The centre piece of the concert will be Martin Ellerby’s Euphonium Concerto, one of his finest works, featuring Australian virtuoso James Blackford, a Besson Artist currently studying for his master’s at the RNCM. The festival also looks to the future with the welcome return of the current European Youth Band champions, Wardle Academy Brass Band and the annual showcase for the Junior RNCM Band.

Counterbalancing the raft of world premieres, Paul Hindmarsh has selected a number of works from the 1930s, not just the established ‘classic’ test pieces but major works that fell into obscurity or were never given a chance to become established because they were not composed for competitons. Then as now ambitious bands were commissioning their own bespoke repertoire, like Callender’s Cable Works, which in 1932 commissioned a major piece from Granville Bantock. The band played his dramatic overture King Lear in public and part of it was recorded orchestrally in 1945, but it languished unpublished and unheard for decades until it was revived by Dr. Roy Newsome over 20 years ago. A new performing edition, with percussion added according to the orchestral version will be performed by Brighouse & Rastrick Band.

In 1931 prolific composer Havergal Brian, who was no stranger to brass band contests, sent a draft score of a brass band piece entitled The Battle Song ‘on spec’ to John Henry Iles presumably with a view to it being scored up as a test piece. It remained unfinished for decades until John Pickard created the full score at the turn of the century for Cory Band and its conductor at that time, Robert Childs.The realisation has since been revised and is being revived by Tredegar Band as a 60^th birthday year hat-tip to Professor Pickard, whose most recent brass band work, the Turner inspired Rain, Stream and Speed is being performed once again by 2022 European Champions Cory Band.

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