Soloist: Anabel Voigt
Featuring: Frederico Pezzilli; Yijie Qu; Erin Vinter; Cara Van Der Berg; Samuel Nolan; Paul Kowal.
Conductor: Xinyue Liu 
Pianist: Ella Cordon Vieito
Tredegar Band
Conductor: Ian Porthouse 

A new generation of brass band soloists are increasingly inspired to explore wider musical boundaries of style and substance.  

Adding to the sense of adventurism is this ambitious release from German tenor horn player Anabel Voigt, a recent Royal Birmingham Conservatoire graduate and current Masters student at the RNCM in Manchester.  The use of accompanying string ensemble, piano and brass band offers both subtle and bravura backing to a solo voice of versatile confidence and command.    

'Farbenspiel' (meaning colourplay) balances baroque Telemann and Pergolesi, post romantic Strauss, poetic Fanny Mendelssohn and iconic Debussy, against exciting new compositional talents from South Africa, Germany and Japan. 

Amorously sinewy

It makes for intriguing detours of explorative modes; Telemann’s ‘Fantasie Nr. 1’  solo study played with academic thoughtfulness, the Pergolesi ‘Concerto in G Major’  a triptych of sprightly bounce, tender delicacy and bubbling energy.  The trio of flute works is completed by a tonally fattened, but still amorously sinewy ‘Syrinx’.  

 The trio of flute works is completed by a tonally fattened, but still amorously sinewy ‘Syrinx’.  

Recent research of the 466 works of the remarkable Fanny Mendelssohn will surely reveal yet more gems in years to come (her teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter extolled her compositional skills above that of her brother).

Billet-doux

The bucolic lieder ‘Neue Liebe, Neues Leben’  (‘New Love, new life’) is a delightful setting of an earlier Goethe poem – a playful ‘billet-doux’ reflective of the still fresh romance (written in 1836) enjoyed with her supportive husband Wilhelm Hensel whom she married in 1829.

Although the setting of the Richard Strauss ‘Horn Concerto No 2’  never quite sounds at ease with a heavy brass band accompaniment, the rhythmic pulsations of Andrea Hobson’s funky ‘Gazella’  certainly do - led by a vertebrae re-aligning tuba section that underpins the flexible spring of the soloist.

Frank Zabel’s ‘Nightsong’  captures a sense of lonely mystery and intrigue – like peering from afar through the window of Edward Hooper’s famous ‘Nighthawks’ painting.

Frank Zabel’s ‘Nightsong’  captures a sense of lonely mystery and intrigue – like peering from afar through the window of Edward Hopper’s famous ‘Nighthawks’ painting.  The string playing adds to the subtle allusion of solitude.  

Maho Kato’s ‘Three Dances’  closes things with compact, accomplished substance: An engaging mix of styles; the languid ‘Waltz in a Dream’  leading into a romantic, bluesy ‘Nightpark’  and waspish ‘Tarantella’  finale that just has time to catch its breath halfway through.

Iwan Fox

To purchase: https://www.anabel-voigt.com/en/

Play list:

1. Fantasie Nr. 1 (G.P Telemann)

2. Flute Concerto in G major (G. B Pergolesi)
i. Spiritoso
ii. Adagio
iii. Allegro spiritoso 

5. Neue Liebe, Neues Leben (Fanny Hensel)

6. Syrinx (C. Debussy)

7. Horn Concerto No.2 in Eb major (R. Strauss)
i. Allegro – Andante con moto
ii. Allegro molto

9. Nightsong (Frank Zabel)

10. Gazella (Andrea Hobson)

11. Three Dances (Maho Kato)
i. Waltz in a dream
ii. Nightpark
iii. Tarantella