Perth Chamber Music continued the very successful concerts in their 75th Anniversary season with the excellent A 4 Brass Quartet, sounding particularly fine in the ample acoustic of St John’s Kirk. All four members are principal players of the most famous brass bands (Black Dyke, Brighouse & Rastrick, Grimethorpe and Foden’s)
With polished sound they began with Strauss’ Overture to Die Fledermaus, with ear inviting rubato and a lively final presentation and coda. Their fine blend was shown in Kentaro Sato’s Tsuna’ngari inspired by Japan’s Boxing Day Tsunami. Finely lyrical it had echoes of the slow movement of Dvorak’s New World and built to a sonorous final chord. Bartok’s Six Romanian Dances followed: the fourth haunting, the fifth and six an exciting finish.
Doreen Carwithen’s Suffolk Morris was, as it says, a friendly morris-dance, contrasted with the devotional Tallis Motet If Ye Love me, which grandly filled the architecture. A4 Brass ended the first half with the jolly, melancholic, finally triumphant Vaughan Williams Folk Song Suite.
With ideal clarity and movement of lines they continued with a superb performance of Bach’s ‘Little’ Fugue in g minor, continuing with Bruckner’s Motet Locus Iste translated to brass with impressive solidity.
A4 Brass Quartet is unique in its commissioning of over 300 works and arrangements and setting up of competitions for newly composed pieces. Andy Wareham’s The Code (dedicated to Margaret Hamilton who almost single-handedly wrote the computer code for the Apollo 11 mood landing) won the competition. It built up convincingly from its mathematical start of dots and dashes, accelerating to chatter and a chorale.
As it was Perth Chamber Music’s Christmas Concert A4Brass relaxed Big Band sound for Let It Snow and ‘Wight’ Christmas – first performed at an Isle of Wight concert – jingles and indeed Jinglebells making a brief appearance. Santa Baby and It’ Cold Outside were smoochy.
Next, acted by the group and with awesome Fingerfertigkeit and breath by solo euphonium player Carnoustie-born Chris Robertson was their genuinely funny version of Arban’s Carnival of Venice Variations. A brilliant virtuoso end to the programme was Bramwell Tovey’s Street Song No.4 – tempo indication ‘Very fast Indeed’. And joyfully, it was!
Applauded to the echo, their encores were Jaime Texidor’s Amparito Roca with solos for each and a final “We Wish you A Merry Christmas” with glorious, golden harmonies.
Ian Stuart-Hunter