These live recordings
were all made at the regular concert
series of the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra.
Combined with several further discs
by the same ensemble to be reviewed
for Musicweb in due course they collectively
provide a useful demonstration of the
quality and sheer diversity of music
now being written for symphonic winds
by composers both in the United Kingdom
and on the continent.
For the last twenty
years or so Guy Woolfenden has been
at the heart of this freshly invigorated
interest in the medium along with fellow
former horn player Timothy Reynish,
for many years a teacher at the Royal
Northern College of Music in Manchester.
It was Reynish who commissioned Woolfenden’s
suite Gallimaufry in 1983, a
work that has gone on to see tremendous
success and countless performances.
The piece started life as incidental
music for Shakespeare’s Henry IV, one
of over one hundred and fifty scores
that Woolfenden produced during his
thirty-seven year tenure as Head of
Music at the RSC. The reasons for its
popularity are immediately evident.
Cast in six brief movements that play
continuously (the title quite literally
means jumble or medley) the work is
abundantly tuneful and deftly scored.
A dignified opening, appropriately entitled
Church and State, returns at
the close in emphatic grandeur whilst
of the central movements, Inn and
Out is an appealing dance like portrait
of the revelry at the Boar’s Head Tavern,
subsequently spilling over into the
tavern brawl in Starts and Fits.
At the heart of the work is Father
and Son, a touching elegy eloquently
portraying Prince Hal’s relationship
with his father and Falstaff.
Woolfenden’s work provides
a convenient link to Edward Gregson’s
The Kings Go Forth, also coincidentally
stemming from music originally written
for RSC productions of The Plantagenets
and Henry IV parts I and II between
1988 and 1991. The piece was premiered
in 1996 and to the substantial instrumental
forces the composer adds voices, perhaps
not altogether successfully until the
bars leading up to and through the majestic
conclusion. Gregson is a master of scoring
however and the instrumental writing
is characteristically vivid and packed
with excitement, dramatic effect and
incident. The Dies Irae figures prominently
in the opening movement, whilst the
fanfares that open the piece return
in various guises throughout. In contrast
the initially hymn like central movement
(again drawing on the fanfares from
the beginning) soon gives way to a jazzy
treatment of the well known medieval
tune Sumer is icumen in. The
final movement is initially centred
around the battle scenes and subsequent
funeral music for the two kings before
the fanfares once again return to conclude
the work in a blaze of glory.
The American composer
Stephen Melillo provides a very different
piece to open the disc. Concerned with
the ascent of humanity through the ages
I would recommend that the somewhat
pretentious programme be ignored in
favour of the music itself. What emerges
is a piece of striking drama, again
scored with considerable élan
and full of rhythmic and melodic incident.
In point of fact the music is not necessarily
melodically individual and I found myself
thinking of numerous John Williams film
scores during the opening movement as
well as the Joseph Schwantner Percussion
Concerto on a number of occasions.
However it hardly matters when the scoring
and ideas are presented with the panache
that they are here. Listen out for the
haunting slow music of the central movement,
which is particularly affecting.
Without a shadow of
doubt the odd work out on the disc is
Percy Grainger’s The Power of Rome
and the Christian Heart.
How the piece came into being is a story
in itself for Grainger originally scored
the work for full orchestra and organ,
subsequently re-scoring it for wind
band to fulfil a commission that he
did not feel he could otherwise complete,
whilst openly admitting his self crib.
Sadly the organ used on this recording
is a sorry substitute for the grand
instrument that the composer surely
had in mind. The material for the whole
work is drawn and developed from the
opening solo organ bars, the tone of
the piece sonorously subdued for the
large part, a fact that is explained
by the enigmatic title, referring to
Grainger’s thoughts on the futility
of the individual’s battle against the
forces of authority. In particular the
piece says much about the composer’s
anti-war stance and the plight of soldiers
recruited to fight against their principles.
Interestingly the piece was completed
in its original orchestral form in 1943
but had been commenced in 1918, therefore
straddling both world wars in its long
gestation.
Grainger’s version
of Country Gardens, included
as an encore given at the live concert
recording, could hardly be in sharper
contrast to the profound and deeply
personal expression of his tone poem.
It is therefore perhaps fortunate that
it follows the Gregson work and not
the touching final bars of Grainger
in "serious" mode. It does
however provide a lighthearted conclusion
to an enjoyable and interesting disc,
performed with technical dexterity and
undeniable spirit by Douglas Bostock’s
Japanese players.
Christopher Thomas
Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra/Douglas Bostock 