Category: TEST PIECES (Major Works) Composer: Kenneth Downie
The 2nd. Section Testpiece for the 2008 Regionals.
A short audio extract is provided for you to listen to and get a flavour of the work. Click on "More Details" button on the right to access this extract.
If you enjoyed listening to this extract from this work, you can buy the full CD recording by clicking on the "BROWSE" valve at the top of your screen, then click on the "BRASS BAND CD's" section.
The CD recording is REGIONALS 2008, recorded on DOY CD238.
Category: TEST PIECES (Major Works) Composer: Alan Fernie
Set as the Fourth Section Test Piece for the 2014 Britsh Brass Band Regional Championships.
If you have enjoyed listening to the audio extract here, and want to hear the entire performance, you can purchase the REGIONS 2014 CD on this site which contains full performances of all 5 testpieces. Simply type REGIONALS 2014 into the QUICK SEARCH to the right of your screen to find it.
Three Spanish Impressions originally were part of a large, single movement work called “ SPAIN” Whilst happy with the content of the work, I realised that it was rather unwieldy and a bit too long, so, with the publishers blessing, created a shorter suite from the existing material.
The brooding and repetitive opening movement takes its mood perhaps from the Miles Davis/Gil Evans album "Sketches of Spain", albeit in a less stringent harmonic language. The middle movement is a delicate and fragile waltz, with shades of a romance within, and the finale, a colourful and robust fandango, also contains a lyrical heart !
The thematic material, whilst written very much as a pastiche of the music of Spain, is original, and the accent is firmly on melody and musicianship! Alan Fernie June 2007
Category: TEST PIECES (Major Works) Composer: Kevin Houben
Grade 5.0 Duration 9.05
Thyellene depicts of a battle that took place on the ‘Tielenheide’ - a stretch of moorland near the Belgian village of Tielen in 1597. In that memorable battle Prince Maurice of Nassau, commander of the Dutch army, defeated Count Varax, a general of the Spanish army - with a considerably smaller troop than the enemy. This great heroic subject has been transformed into this equally great work for brass band, which won the third prize at the 2009 European Composers Competition.
Category: TEST PIECES (Major Works) Composer: Kevin Houben
Grade 5.0 Duration 9.05
Thyellene depicts of a battle that took place on the ‘Tielenheide’ - a stretch of moorland near the Belgian village of Tielen in 1597. In that memorable battle Prince Maurice of Nassau, commander of the Dutch army, defeated Count Varax, a general of the Spanish army - with a considerably smaller troop than the enemy. This great heroic subject has been transformed into this equally great work for brass band, which won the third prize at the 2009 European Composers Competition.
Category: TEST PIECES (Major Works) Composer: Thomas Doss
Duration 13.28 Grade 6.0
Time Machine is a journey through time that begins in the Stone Age. Evolution and the coming of man take place. The journey takes us into the present, in which disorientation and chaos abound. We travel further into the future. An unfamiliar, quiet and surreal landscape lies before us and we wander through it, bewildered as we become aware of the destruction of the environment. Suddenly, and for no reason, memories from our childhood are awoken. Cultures have become completely mixed into one and the evolution of man has run its course. We realise that there is no “afterwards” as before us lies the Stone Age once again... The wheel of time spins blindly on and all is repeated.
Category: TEST PIECES (Major Works) Composer: Herman Pallhuber
Please note that currently, there is only a LARGE A3 score available for this work.
There is no A4 size score, nor is there a study score.
Set as the Championship Section Test Piece for the 2019 National Finals of the British Brass Band Championships in the Royal Albert Hall London.
The testpiece for the 2009 British Open on the 12th. of September in Symphony Hall, Birmingham.
Brass Band Grade 6
Duration: 17 minutes.
Grade equivalents for Brass Band test-pieces where there is considerable overlap at the higher levels, depending on the level of competition (local, regional or national):
Category: TEST PIECES (Major Works) Composer: Herman Pallhuber
Set as the Championship Section Test Piece for the 2019 National Finals of the British Brass Band Championships in the Royal Albert Hall London.
The testpiece for the 2009 British Open on the 12th. of September in Symphony Hall, Birmingham.
Duration 17.00
This work was commissioned by Brass Band Oberosterreich at the 2007 European Brass Band Championships at Symphony Hall in Birmingham on the 5th. of May 2007.
The first concert performance was given by the Leyland Band conducted by Howard Evans at the Royal Northern College of Music Festival of Brass in Manchester on the 27th. of January 2008, and was used as the Test Piece for the Swiss Championships at the Convention Centre in Montreux on the 30th. of November 2008.
Competing bands should note that the score and parts were revised following the Swiss Championships, and therefore a completely new score & set of parts have been produced for the 2009 British Open Championships.
The set of parts includes 29 parts, plus 2 single page "off Stage" parts. The work requires four percussionists.
PROGRAMME NOTE Titan was a novel by the German author Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, who later called himself Jean Paul. It is considered the author’s main work and he referred to it as his ‘cardinal and capital novel’. It is almost 900 pages in length and tells the story of the transition of its hero, Albano de Cesara, from a passionate youth to a mature man. Jean Paul was one of Gustav Mahler’s favourite authors and the latter gave the original five-movement version of his first symphony the subtitle The Titan — in deference to Jean Paul’s novel.
Titan’s Progress, which is my first work for the British style brass band, also contains references to the music of Gustav Mahler. Motifs from his First Symphony are employed throughout (like the trumpet signals, the interval of a falling fourth, and chromatically falling triplets), especially the principal theme of the finale. I have adapted this heroic martial motif as the basis for the main theme of my own Titan’s Progress — the chorale melody which is heard three times in all and represents the progress of Albano’s ‘titanic’ spirit from youthful innocence to mature experience. My music is programmatic and uses the content of the novel and its hero Albano’s evolution for its underlying structure. The stylistic variety of the work (including the Chorale, an impudent Làndler, a dancing Farandole, and a climactic Fugue) is Mahleresque in its influences.
Hermann Palihuber
Brass Band Grade 6
Duration: 17 minutes.
Grade equivalents for Brass Band test-pieces where there is considerable overlap at the higher levels, depending on the level of competition (local, regional or national):
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