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ARTICLES

 

2003 4BR AWARDS: Test Piece of the Year

Read our nominations below for the above category. To vote, follow the links at the bottom of this page.


Perhaps not a vintage year for test pieces – the selections that is. The European once more turned up a cracker, but the Nationals and Open both made choices that due to time constraints were cut and chopped up into rather inedible musical chunks. Less bands more music was the lesson to be learnt from Birmingham and London for sure.

Elsewhere Eric Ball was well served in his centenary year (although how we longed for Festival Music) but just a rather pathetic celebration of Berlioz who was 200 years old. A cut up version of “Judges” at the Mineworkers was a poor act of remembrance for someone who has provided brass band audiences with some great material over the years.

Still, good works test good bands and the five we have in our list really did that. Some others are worthy of a mention (“Chivalry” and “Resurgam” especially), but these are the ones that took our fancy.


Torstein Aagaard - Nilsen Aubade: Torstein Aagaard - Nilsen

The European Championships have thrown up some great test pieces in recent years (although it must be said they have also thrown up a few turkeys since 1978 as well), and “Aubade” – “Dawn Songs of the Fabulous Birds” deserves to ranked up there with the likes of “Montreux Wind Dances” and the composer’s own “Seid”.

It came out of the left field of brass band compositions, but it still wasn’t too avant-garde to upset the traditionalists. Great effects, colours and timbres and with a wicked sense of the fantastic and slightly absurd in the musical portraits of the birds that would have made David Attenborough chuckle and laugh. Great modern brass music and a great test piece. Well done EBBA.


Eric BallKensington Concerto: Eric Ball

If bands and conductors thought the choice of Eric Ball’s most personal and introspective test piece was perhaps too easy a test for both the Elite Section of the Norwegian National Championships and the First Sectional National Finals in Dundee, then after playing it, they were certainly made to think again. It made our list last year after mainland Europe found it too difficult to overcome and this year it still destroyed too many unsuspecting bands.

Not one band all year caught the exact atmosphere of longing and regret that is so evident from the very start of the piece and many MD’s tried to find some sort of “hidden” meaning in their interpretations that was patently never there in the score. Eric Ball had laid it all out before them as clear as day, yet just about every MD walked blindly into a musical fog of confusion.


Prague: Judith Bingham

OK. Some of you will be think we may be stark raving bonkers, but we really liked Judith Bingham’s evocative and very atmospheric piece.

It wasn’t what the traditionalists liked (and neither did a lot of players or conductors to be fair), but surprisingly the initial hostile reception it received cooled somewhat after hearing the piece in context from the contest stage. The MD’s and bands who didn’t try and understand it, thankfully fell foul of the judges (although there were one or two odd results), but overall it really did sort out the best from the rest. Just what a good test piece should do.


Simon DobsonLydian Pictures: Simon Dobson

Last year young Mr Dobson won our “Best Newcomer” award for his fine effort in winning the European Composer’s Competition. We said then he was a talent to look out for, and in 2003 he more than confirmed it.

His “Lydian Pictures” was a super test piece for the fourth section bands at the Regional contests. Full of colour and clever yet intelligent ideas, the players and MD’s we spoke to both before and after said it was one of the best test pieces they had worked up for a contest for years. We can only hope that he continues to write more for brass in the future and perhaps in a few years we could be reviewing a National Finals test piece. He is that good.


Eric BallFestival Music – Eric Ball

The piece that should have been, but never quite was in 2003. Not to be disrespectful to the Pontins Brass Band Championships, “Festival Music” should have been played by the best bands in the land at either Symphony Hall in Birmingham or the Albert Hall in London, not the Fun Factory Ballroom, Prestatyn.

This was the chance to honour the great man in 2003 with a work that would have tested the best both technically and musically to the limit, but the organisers in their opinion didn’t think it cut the mustard. It was the great disappointment of the year – especially after hearing some fine efforts in Pontins. What would YBS or Dyke, Fairey’s, Brighouse and the rest have done with it though?


Previous winners:
2002:
2001:
Albion – Jan Van der Roost

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