(Image: Marc Gascoigne Photography)

Conductor: Martyn Brabbins
Soloist: Tim De Maeseneer 
Royal College of Music
London
Saturday 9th August

Although the musical vistas for this concert stretched far and wide, you suspect it also had a focus on a much closer horizon.

With the 2025 Proms in full flow a stone’s throw away at the Royal Albert Hall, Martyn Brabbins gave an eloquent poke in the ribs reminder to Radio 3 supremo Sam Jackson and his BBC apparatchiks of just what this particular ensemble could bring to the annual celebration of musical excellence.

A show of support came not only with a packed hall of family and friends, but also an impressive line-up of composers, some of whom having showcased their Proms talents in recent years, including Gavin Higgins, Sir Karl Jenkins, John Pickard, Martin Ellerby and Richard Blackford, whose new work ‘Orbital’  could well be the catalyst that pricks the future interest of the Proms fixers. 

Serious inclinations

They in turn will have been heartened by the quality of the four new works by emerging writers that Brabbins generously included in a programme of serious musical inclinations.  So too Herbert Howells (whose portrait adorned one of the walls), as the concert opened with the majestic intricacies of ‘Pageantry’.   Arguably the most complete ‘test-piece’ work for the medium its substance was admirably broached by the ensemble and soloists.

They in turn will have been heartened by the quality of the four new works by emerging writers that Brabbins generously included in a programme of serious musical inclinations.

The more intimate reflections of Edmund Rubbra’s ‘Variations on The Shining River’  proved more difficult to carry off given the 91 performers and the lively acoustic. Its romantic title is nothing but an illusion, the work itself a remarkable variation exposition based on a fragmentary line of a piano teaching piece.  The variants though were finely judged, the complex solo lines in particular, played with artistic maturity.

Here and now

The link between past, present and future was carefully balanced by the MD throughout; Daniel Hall’s ‘Shapeshifter’,  a very ‘here and now’ exploration of complex youthful experiences and emotions – bold and resilient on one hand, fragile and introspective on another as it weaved its path of emerging and evolving identity and acceptance.  The underlying message as well as the music was splendidly understood by the performers.

So too the trio of cameo works provided by the NYBBGB Young Composer Competition winners, each different in structure and modulation, tempo and feel. 

Will Everitt’s ‘Variations on an Enclosure’  was a compact academic exercise brought off with mature elan in its inventive explorations. The bucolic canvas of ‘Betws-y-Coed’  by Nina Martin brought a darkened beauty out of a tender landscape, whilst Samuel Thackray’s ‘Nocturnal Dances’  mixed mischief with mystery – like hearing an urban fox enjoying a rummage through the human detritus of the night. 

Will Everitt’s ‘Variations on an Enclosure’  was a compact academic exercise brought off with mature elan in its inventive explorations. The bucolic canvas of ‘Betws-y-Coed’  by Nina Martin brought a darkened beauty out of a tender landscape, whilst Samuel Thackray’s ‘Nocturnal Dances’  mixed mischief with mystery – like hearing an urban fox enjoying a rummage through the human detritus of the night. 

Olympian presence

In between came the supreme talents of Belgian horn star Tim De Maesenner. His Olympian presence in Edward Gregson’s ‘Three Gods’  concerto brought Zeus, Hermes and Apollo to life – in turn capricious and omnipotent, fleet and waspish and finally triumphant and virtuous.  

He really is up there with the tenor horn playing immortals, the rendition of ‘Danse Foculi’  an exotic display of fiery virtuosity.

Pertinant tribute 

The very pertinant tribute to Elgar Howarth (a former President of the NYBBGB) came with ‘Baba Yaga’  and ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’  – part of his masterful arrangement of Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’  that he created in full for the Philip Jones Brass Ensmeble. (The encore was his tongue in cheek ‘Hogarth’s Hoe-down’).

Martyn Brabbins brought a timely reminder to the powers that be that they should consider finding a space for us over the road again in the near future.

Almost 50 years to the day since he led Grimethorpe and Black Dyke at a Proms that also showcased brass band playing old and new (Bliss and Ireland against Gerhard and Henze), Martyn Brabbins brought a timely reminder to the powers that be that they should consider finding a space for us over the road again in the near future.

Iwan Fox