Duration: 25 minutes

 

A work in four movements :

01. Prelude
02. Scherzo
03. Canzona
04. Rondo

In 1946, following his return from war service in the RAF, Wilfred Heaton took up his composing pen after six fallow years. His first substantial original work was a Suite for brass band completed in 1947 under the pseudonym Paul Krask. In 1950, Heaton re»composecl it for full symphony orchestra, adding a new and vibrant scherzo. A few years later he used this as the basis for his most overtly ‘modern’ work, an epic Piano Sonata of Bartokian complexity and intensity.

 

Following the performance and publication in 1982 of Heaton's most famous work, Contest Music, the conductor Howard Snell. then Musical Director of the Desford Colliery Band, asked the composer for a new work. What turned up in 1986 was the original brass Suite and shortly after that a brand new brass version of the orchestral suite appeared, now re-titled Partita.

 

Partita is a symphonic tour-de-force for brass band ~ an extraordinary and confident debut as a composer of ‘long-form‘ music, that can stand comparison with works by far more established and ‘eminent’ British composers of Heatons generation. Although the music bears unmistakeable Heaton fingerprints -  fastidious craftsmanship, sharply etched rhythmic and harmonic character, its underlying emotional core - he also leant heavily on the example of William Walton, whose Symphony No.1 seems to hover over the rhetoric of the opening Prelude, wild energy of the Scherzo, the hitter-sweet lyricism and powerful climax of the Canzomz, and the wit and momentum of the final Rondo.

 

This edition is basecl on the composefs final manuscript. which he gave to Howard Snell. There are a number of ambiguities in the text, which have been resolved with reference to the orchestral score and the re-composition for solo piano.

 

Scherzo, bar lll - a D sharp has been included in the euphonium; bar 112 - a D natural on the first beat, also on euphonium.

 

Canzoria, bars 51 to 54 - D naturals in the E flat bass part, in line with the orchestral version‘

 

Rondo, bars 41 to 47 ~ the soprano comet part has been raised by a fourth throughout, as in the orchestral and piano versions; bar Zll ~ the last quaver of bar 210 has been tied over to zi quaver on 211on horns and baritones, as in the orchestral version.

 

Paul Hindmarsh, November 2092, revised February 2015,