I Can Cook Too - Brunel Brass (Live)

In June 1990, as part of a music festival promoted alongside Manchester's Olympic bid, I was asked to devise a programme featuring brass bands and voices for a Free Trade Hall concert. In part one Britannia (Foden's) Band gave a brilliant premiere of a BBC commission (at my suggestion) from David Bedford - Toccata for Tristan. Novello did not publish (hire only!) so it has rarely been performed since, but is a really colourful and inventive piece. 

Toccata for Tristan is a sequel to David's wind band Rondo for Isolde. Both are built form famous passages form Wagner's great opera. The Toccata is a much tougher proposition for perform than the Rondo. The rapid repeated figuration is rhythmically highly complex. Howard Snell and the band performed it impeccably. It would be great to hear it live again sometime.

I came across a copy of the digital DAT cassette a little while ago among the collection of old "Safety" recordings I kept rather than deleting or reusing them.  It was a pleasure to relive this dramatic performance. I hope you enjoy it too in this transfer.

David Bedford(1937-2011) - Toccata for Tristan

Turning Page - Sleeping At Last Cover Paige & Toby

Crisial Track 3

Original by KNOWER

FULL VID HERE - 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ql_WzL50g4

Hanging On feat. Mared - Live OWAIN HOUSE SESSION 2025    (KNOWER COVER)

In September 1950, Wilfred Heaton (aged 31) completed his first and only work for symphony orchestra. It was a four movement suite, which had it included a substantial symphonic first movement would have merited the title Symphony. Inspired and influenced by the Symphony completed in 1935 by William Walton, it marked Heaton's first departure from the more limited scope of the brass band genres of The Salvation Army. It was also the first work exhibiting a more extended range and intensity of language for which he searched in the years after returning from WW2 service as RAF ground crew.

With little prospect of  a performance, Heaton returned to this experimental opus on three occasions, making a truncated brass band version shortly after finished the work, elaborating its dynamic scherzo and joyful rondo as two movements of an adventurous Piano Sonata and in 1983, revising the text as Partita for brass band.

In his later years, Heaton wished to suppress this version, and it was not performed until some 20 years after his death in Germany under the baton of Phillipe Bach. Sadly, a recording was not made at that time, but given the quality of the music and orchestration, the work deserves to be heard. This digital demo (made with Note Performer and Spaces II) though far from giving the full sonic picture of the work, at least presents of flavour of the music in orchestral colours.

Heaton - Suite for orchestra "Partita" (demo)

Shortly before his death in May 2000, Wilfred Heaton completed the sketch of Variations for brass band, a 30-minute semi-autobiographical work for brass band. It had 10 years of 'stop-start' to get this far. The first part of the works was fully scored, but the rest was realised with consumate skill by Howard Snell, to whom the work is dedicated. As he composed the sketches, Heaton left various notes alongside the music including a number which reveal his expressive intentions and others explaining the challenges that a band would have in performing the work as composed.  That was one reason why the Heaton family sanctioned a shorter version, more practical for brass band concerts and competitions. 

Heaton's first love was the orchestra, not the brass band. Much of Variations, like Contest Music, feels like a sketch for an orchestral work. To that end, I have ventured an orchestration to present his fine music with greater colour variation, particularly in the central section (Variations 6-8) and the finale Chorale (Variation 12). 

The demo sound is far from perfect, but I have uploaded it with the intention of providing another perspective on Heaton's final masterpiece.

Heaton - Variations for orchestra, orch. Hindmarsh (demo)

Daniel Hall is a British multi award-winning composer & arranger whose works have been performed by some of the country’s leading ensembles, including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, A4 Brass Quartet, Tredegar Town Band, Orchestra of Opera North and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.
His music has been performed and recorded internationally by soloists and ensembles such as: Lode Violet & Brass Band Willebroek (BEL), Brass Band Öberösterreich (AUT), Fabian Bloch & Liberty Brass Band (CHE), Atlantic Brass Band (USA), Brass Band Treize Etoiles (CHE), Gilles Rocha & the European Youth Brass Band, as well as many more.
Daniel graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama with First Class Honours in Contemporary Composition. Whilst studying, Daniel wrote “Smoke Sketches” and “Sanctuary!”, the set test for the National Youth Brass Band Championships of Great Britain and European Youth Brass Band Championships respectively. In 2019, Daniel won the seventh European Composers Competition in Montreux, Switzerland, for his brass band composition “A Dialogue of Transmogrified Souls…”.  He was asked to compose two fanfares for RWCMD. The first was in honour of the college’s principal, Dame Hilary Boulding, and the second for the college’s president, King Charles III, to mark his 70th birthday, which Daniel conducted. 
Recently, Daniel worked with Brass Band Treize Etoiles (CHE) on a new major composition for the 2021 Swiss Nationals, “Gl!tch”, premiered in the Auditorium Stravinski on his 25th Birthday. In 2022, Daniel worked with Stavanger Brass Band in order to create their entire twenty five minute set, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall”, for which the ensemble was awarded second place at SIDDIS Brass Band Entertainment Contest.

I Can Cook Too - Brunel Brass (Live)

Danielhallcomposer

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