Program No. 67 - Music by Philip Sparke II

Program No. 62 was the first of our shows featuring the music of Philip Sparke.  This week we present our second program of his works.

1. Gala Fanfare - from Five Festive Fanfares (Williams Fairy Band)
We open the show with Gala Fanfare which was originally composed for a festival of bands that was a part of World Expo '88 in Brisbane. For those interested the other four fanfares are titled Champions Fanfare, Birthday Fanfare, Festival Fanfare and Victory Fanfare and were all composed for different events. Tonight's recording is by the Williams Fairy Band, with Phillip McCann as conductor, from the album Images of Brass (2001).

2. A London Overture (Britannia Building Society Band)
This is one of Sparke's earlier major works for Brass Band having been commissioned to compose a piece for the 1984 Dutch National Brass Band Championships and is one of the pieces heard consistently in brass band contests since. This particular performance is by the Britannia Building Society Band recorded at the 1991 European Band Championships.

3. The Vikings (Eikanger-Bjørsvik Musikklag)
First composed in 1989, this piece is performed by Eikanger-Bjørsvik Musikklag from their 1997 album, Philip Sparke.

4. Music for a Festival (Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra)
This piece was commissioned by the Boosey & Hawkes Band Festivals for the 1985 finals of the Youth Section in the National Brass Band Championships of  Great Britain. Sparke has written a lot of music for brass bands that he subsequently arranges concert bands, and vice versa. This, as you will note, is the concert band arrangement of the brass band work. It is performed here by the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra with Philip Sparke as conductor, from the 1992 album Orient Express (European Wind Circle).

 5. Tuba Concerto - Allegro (Black Dyke Band)
This was commissioned in 2006 by German instrument manufacturer Miraphone. It is dedicated to, and first performed by, a long time friend of Sparke, Markus Theinart. The Concerto is in two movements (Lento and Allegro) but we will only be hearing the final movement, performed by Black Dyke Band with Nicholas Childs as conductor and Joe Cook as the soloist, from their 2008 album Music for Battle Creek - The Brass Band Music of Philip Sparke. We will be coming back to this CD for some of the rest of the music on the show.

6. Dances and Alleluias (Black Dyke Band)
This piece was commissioned by the British Federation of Brass Bands for their inaugural English National Brass Band Championships held in 2006.

Sparke describes the piece as follows:

My chief concern when writing Dances and Alleluias was that I knew I couldn’t continue the line of thought that had led to Music of the Spheres, a piece which had taken me about as far as I currently could (or wanted to) go in terms of scale and virtuosity. In addition, I wanted to write ‘absolute’ music rather than a programmatic piece but keep the same emotional journey which is for me the most important aspect of Spheres. 

My first idea for the new piece was a final ‘alleluia’ - I didn’t imagine any specific religious connection but wanted the slow music to be vocal in nature and ecstatic in mood, as that word implies. It was then logical to intersperse the slow music with faster dances. 

This piece is also one of the test pieces chosen for the A Grade section in this year's Victorian Brass Band Championships to be held in Ballarat later this month. My spies tell me that there is a chance that more than one of the bands has chosen this as their test piece.

Tonight's performance is again from the album Music for Battle Creek - The Brass Band Music of Philip Sparke, and again performed by Black Dyke Band.

This piece is in 4 movements and goes for about 14 and a half minutes. 

7. Pantomime (Britannia Building Society Band)

This solo work was commissioned by Nicholas Childs back in 1986. It is being performed by Britannia Building Society Band. Unfortunately my information does not indicate who the soloist is. This is again from the 1997 album titled Philip Sparke.

8. A Tale As Yet Untold (Eikanger-Bjørsvik Musikklag) 

I endeavoured to play this piece on the last Philip Sparke program, but technical issues foiled that attempt. Hopefully those technical issues have disappeared and we will be able to play this piece in full. For a description of this piece please read my program notes from that show.

9. Music for Battle Creek (Black Dyke Band)

This piece was commissioned by the Brass Band of Battle Creek, located in Michigan, USA. The music seeks to salute the American 'can-do' attitude, full of excitement, bravado and virtuosity.

This piece is in 3 movements:

1.   Prelude and Toccata
2.   Elegy
3.   Rondo Finale

This is the title track of the CD we have used for a lot of this show, Music for Battle Creek - The Brass Band Music of Philip Sparke, and again is performed by Black Dyke Band.

That's it for this show. There's plenty more music from Philip Sparke that we haven't played yet, though we may leave it for a couple of months before we play the third program of this series.

For next week's show we'll be looking at another composer, Lloyd George, plus talk about the upcoming Victorian Brass Band Championships.