Transatlantic
Onyx Brass / John Wilson, Viv Mclean (piano, Octet)
rec. 2024, Fleming Hall, Royal College of Music, London, UK
Chandos CHAN20399 [65]
The programme opens with the premiere recording of William Walton’s Roaring Fanfare for brass and percussion, which Lord Solly Zuckerman commissioned to commemorate the opening of the new terrace at London Zoo’s Lion House. It was heard on 3 June 1976 on the arrival of Her Majesty the Queen at a reception marking the 150th anniversary of the Zoological Society. The piece is noticeably short, less than a minute. Alongside the typical Waltonian regal fanfare sound, it is characterised by short downward glissandi, mimicking the lions’ roar.
John Adams originally devised China Gates for piano in 1977. This post-minimalist piece is descriptive of rainfall. I am not sure where “China” comes into the equation: there is no connection with his opera Nixon in China. “Gates”, according to Adams’s website, “is a term borrowed from electronics, [and] are the moments when the modes abruptly and without warning shift. There is ‘mode’ in this music, but there is no “modulation.”
There is only an extant pencil sketch of Benjamin Britten’s Funeral March, commenced in 1938 but abandoned. In 2022, Bernard Hughes was asked to complete the work for the present ensemble. He effectively extended it from seventeen to forty-six bars. Britten had left a few elliptical notes as to what would have come next. It is a lugubrious piece as befits the title. There is no suggestion of the original intention or occasion for the March.
Another Britten premiere is A Fanfare for June 30th, 1970. He composed it specially for the farewell gala for Sir David Webster, the then retiring chief executive of the Royal Opera House. According to the liner notes, it has not been published, recorded or performed in public until this year’s 2025 Aldeburgh Festival, where it is due to be played on 29 June. Incorporated into the score are “scraps of nine of Sir David’s favourite opera tunes”. It is a bright piece, with some melancholic touches.
Florence Price’s Octet for brass and piano was discovered in 2009 in a cache of lost scores at her Illinois summer house. From the first, the listener is captivated by the none-too-subtle fusion of European classical music with Americana. The first of three movements communicates Price’s take on the spiritual, with nods to George Gershwin. The liner notes suggest hints of Dvořák’s New World Symphony in the slow Andante cantabile, but the ‘trio’ section is nothing like anything the Bohemian wrote. Blues, galops and jazz infuse the wayward final movement, which leaves the listener wanting an encore. The Octet is scored for two trumpets, two horns, two trombones, tuba, and a virtuosic part for piano.
Malcolm Arnold’s Brass Quintet No.1 has the hallmarks expected of his lighter pieces: joviality and a sense of humour. But there is darker material in the Chaconne middle movement, including a significant role for the tuba. The pot-boiler here is the Con brio finale, which uses every brass player’s trick in the book – mutes, double tonguing and glissandi. Arnold wrote it for, and dedicated to, the New York Brass Quintet.
Timothy Jackson, the Composer in Association with Onyx Brass, has recently arranged George Gershwin’s early piano prelude, Novelette in Fourths. It is really a sugary, but thoroughly enjoyable little cakewalk, the precursor of jazz dance and music. The ‘fourths’ reflect the considerable use of the perfect 4th interval.
Gordon Langford’s Prelude, Polonaise and Promenade is approachable, typical of a composer who was a frequent guest on the long-running BBC radio programme, Friday Night is Music Night (1953 to the present). Yet this is not mere light music, but a sophisticated contribution to the brass quintet repertoire. The opening Prelude is cool, the Polonaise is bouncy, and the Promenade finale is light-hearted if a little long-winded. The tuba has a prominent role throughout.
It is always good to have a “premiere recording” of a work by Ralph Vaughan Williams, even if it only lasts 31 seconds. He wrote the Flourish on the ‘Morris Call’ for the International Folk Dance Festival held in the Albert Hall in 1935. He based it on a tune collected by Cecil Sharp in Gloucestershire. The piece is all over before the listener can get their stylistic bearings. It is hard to imagine that this tiny miniature comes from the same year as the forty-plus-minute choral suite Five Tudor Portraits.
Joseph Horovitz’s Music Hall Suite is an attractive work for brass quintet. The five movements illustrate aspects of the once popular burlesque theatre, music hall, circus and cabaret. The Soubrette Song is naturally flirtatious, the Trick Cyclists are bouncy, the Adagio-Team is wistful. The final two movements are the “saucy and colourful” Soft Shoe Shuffle and the rumbustious Les Girls. This great little piece deserves its popularity amongst brass ensemble enthusiasts.
The final work on this imaginative programme is Leonard Bernstein’s Dance Suite for brass quintet, his last finished composition. It was premiered on 14 January 1990 at the American Ballet Theater’s Fiftieth Anniversary Gala. The Suite was originally conceived as a ballet score, but the choreographer deemed its five brief movements too succinct for staging.
Each section is dedicated to a prominent choreographer: Dancisca, for Antony (Antony Tudor), Waltz, for Agnes (Agnes de Mille), Bi-Tango, for Mischa (Mikhail Baryshnikov), Two-Step, for Mr. B (George Balanchine), and MTV, for Jerry (Jerome Robbins). Robbins was Bernstein’s collaborator on West Side Story. The closing movement features a groovy jazz-tinged middle section, complete with a drum kit or ‘traps’, adding rhythmic flair. Though short – each movement, save the finale, lasts under a minute – the suite offers a compelling and spirited farewell from one of America’s most energetic composers.
The outstanding playing is complimented by an equally respectable recording. Bernard Hughes’s liner notes provide a detailed discussion of all the works. There are resumes of the Onyx ensemble, conductor John Wilson and Viv McLean, the pianist in Price’s Octet.
This superbly curated disc rewards unhurried listening and repeated return. Its carefully chosen repertoire features musical treasures from both sides of the Atlantic.
John France
Other review: William Kriendler (October 2025)
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Contents
Sir William Walton (1902-1983)
Roaring Fanfare (1976)
John Adams (b.1947)
China Gates (1977)
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Funeral March (1938/2022, completed by Bernard Hughes)
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Octet for brass and piano (1930)
Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006)
Brass Quintet no.1, op.73 (1961)
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Novelette in Fourths (1919, arr. Timothy Jackson)
Benjamin Britten
A Fanfare for June 30th, 1970 (1970)
Gordon Langford (1930-2017)
Prelude, Polonaise and Promenade
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Flourish on the ‘Morris Call’ (1935, arr. Christopher Gordon)
Joseph Horovitz (1926-2022)
Music Hall Suite (1964)
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)
Dance Suite (1989-1990)
