BBCNOW/MacMillan/Childs assessment – James MacMillan’s nostalgic birthday celebration of the euphonium

Named for the candy euphony of its tone, the euphonium is proving itself outdoor the brass band global and entering its personal in fresh repertoire. Much track for euphonium is commissioned through David Childs, some of the software’s most powerful and maximum proficient advocates – his entire circle of relatives veritable champions – the newest being James MacMillan’s new concertante paintings for euphonium and string orchestra.

Its identify, Where the Lugar Meets the Glaisnock, refers back to the confluence of river and tributary within the Ayrshire the city of the Cumnock the place MacMillan spent his early years. It is devoted to Childs and to the composer’s euphonium-playing grandfather, George Loy; a component of nostalgia is thus imbued within the piece’s persona, glaring from the hole solo commentary – sluggish, lyrical and reflective. Yet the short scale passages that emerged from the strings like eddying ripples and have been briefly taken up through Childs signalled the soloist’s virtuosity instantly. It was once this stability of arching melody and extending rhythmic power that drove the efficiency, the absence of alternative wind tools making sure the soloist by no means risked being compromised. Only an extended, expansive word with euphonium and strings in unison was once curious for being undeniably wealthy however by some means no longer solely convincing.

The piece had its premiere the former night time in Cardiff’s Hoddinott Hall, however the Swansea target audience without a doubt were given the easier revel in, the heat and finesse of Childs’ gambling and the burnished strings of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales splendidly resonant within the Brangwyn Hall.

MacMillan carried out with a composer’s authority, and it was once with a composer’s sympathy that he approached the opposite works on this wide-ranging programme, ostensibly embracing folks inflections. In the case of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, the ones inflections are imagined quite than original however evocative however, and eloquently realised through the BBCNOW winds. Stravinsky’s later Symphony in Three Movements, with its mixture of strident power and eager for his Russian previous, had nice verve.

But the threads of depression in Gustav Holst’s Capriccio, after which in Vaughan Williams’s early tone-poem In the Fen Country, additionally had their very own have an effect on. So this was once relatively a exercise for the sentiments, all advised.