Classical Music: Bliss Works For Brass Band

Bliss Works for Brass Band

Kenilworth, The Belmont Variations, Suite from ‘Adam Zero’ (arr. Robert Childs); Welcome the Queen (arr. Michael Halstenson); Four Dances from ‘Checkmate’ (arr. Eric Ball); Things to Come (arr. Phillip Littlemore) The Royal Palaces (arr. Michael Halstenson)

Black Dyke Band
John Wilson
Chandos CHSA 5344
chandos.net

I was delighted to see this tremendous album of brass band music come in with Chandos' summer and autumn releases.

John Wilson, the Black Dyke Band’s honorary president, takes up his baton to conduct music by Sir Arthur Bliss, who took up the mantle of Master of the Queen’s Music in the year of Queen Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation.

Black Dyke Band, formerly known as John Foster & Son Black Dyke Mills Band, is one of the oldest and most well-known brass bands, founded by John Foster at his family's textile mill in Queensbury, Bradford, West Yorkshire.

Wilson and the band take the listener on a journey that encompasses many styles, from the inherent drama of his scores for film, ballet, and television to his flair for the ceremonial.

Bliss contributed two staples to the brass band repertoire: Kenilworth and The Belmont Variations.

As Andrew Burns reminds us in his super notes, the stimulus for the work came jointly from a visit which Bliss and his wife, Trudy, made to Kenilworth Castle, in Warwickshire, and Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novel of the same title, at the heart of which is Queen Elizabeth I’s famous visit. There’s plenty of variety for the musicians to get their teeth into, originally composed as a test piece.

The 1962 Belmont Variations, named after the town in Massachusetts where Trudy was born, was another test piece and enables the band to showcase their excellent technical skills. Burns writes that in an article in The Musical Times, Stephen Arthur Allen advances a compelling argument that the work recalls the state of mind that Bliss experienced when he found himself stranded in the USA, in 1939, at the outbreak of World War II.

The enduring success of these two original works for brass band inspired arrangers to turn to his other compositions, such as Eric Ball’s Four Dances from the ballet Checkmate and Phillip Littlemore’s suite from the film score for Things to Come. Three new arrangements have been made especially for this album: Robert Childs’s suite from the ballet Adam Zero and Michael Halstenson’s arrangements of Welcome the Queen and music from The Royal Palaces.

It is a joyful disc full of exuberance, exceptionally well-balanced thanks to Chandos’ excellent recording engineers. The Black Dyke Band's technical and virtuosic excellence, panache, and amazing flair and fineness make it easy to understand how they have become one of the most successful contesting bands in the world, having won the European Championships thirteen times, the British Open thirty times, and the National Championships of Great Britain twenty-four times.

Although it is a disc featuring music by one composer, it will, through exciting playing with lots of great crescendos, lift the spirit.