Brighouse and Rastrick Band

King’s Hall, Ilkley

The world famous Brighouse and Rastrick Band shared Ilkley’s Kings Hall stage with their guests, the talented young pupils from the Malsis School Choir, on Saturday for a fabulous concert of many different styles and sounds of music.

The band amazed the almost capacity audience with their masterful renditions of music including Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien, the Berlioz overture Le Corsaire, Strauss’s Czardas from Die Fledermaus and Shostakovich’s lively Folk Festival fused together with brass band favourites such as the march The Champions, John Ireland’s enchanting Elegy from a Downland Suite and Peter Graham’s dramatic Shine as the Light.

B&R’s star flugel player Lucy Cutt who was crowned best instrumentalist at this year’s Yorkshire Region heat for the National Brass Band Championships captivated everyone with her colourful rendition of Rodney Newton’s Dimitri, from the film of the same name.

In the first half the choir, accompanied by their musical director James Ashworth on electric piano, gave melodic and engaging renditions of Goodall’s Love Divine and Climb Every Mountain from the film the Sound of Music; the 40 plus pupils aged up to 13-years-old entrancing the audience with a musicality far beyond their years. In the second half they were accompanied by the band to sing Handel Parker’s moving hymn Deep Harmony and a very Yorkshire rendition of Ilkley Moor Baht ‘at. The Band, who came fifth in the Brass In Concert entertainment competition at the Sage at Gateshead on Sunday, were conducted at this concert by Martin Winter, who is a professional trumpet player with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra based in Norway.

Winter has written a five movement suite entitled “La Mer” which depicts different oceans specifically for this contest and B&R played the UK premier of this work during the second half of the concert.

The audience was amazed at the versatility of the Band who not only brought visions of Indian and the Mediterranean to Kings Hall but played Kazoos, hose pipes and buckets of water in what was a fantastically entertaining musical journey. Martin Winter will conduct the Band at the contest also.

Paul Beaumont, president of B&R was compere of the show and gave an informative and colourful description of the programme during the evening.

B&R are expected to return to the Kings Hall, Ilkley around the same time next year.

Marcus Costello