Gavin Higgins grew up in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, a former coal-mining area where the brass-band tradition still persists. He began his musical training playing a tenor horn in one of those bands, and these groups have remained an important part of his musical makeup as a composer. He’s written extensively for wind and brass groups, but his Proms commission, a 40-minute Concerto Grosso for brass band and orchestra, introduced by the Tredegar Band and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Ryan Bancroft (a former trumpeter himself), is by far the most ambitious of those pieces so far.
Higgins describes the work as a “love letter” to the music that he has known since he was a child, drawing on its cultural legacy and musical style. The five movements of his concerto fall into two continuous spans of music; the first sequence, he says, looks at “the medium’s geographical, industrial and socio-economic roots”, while the second celebrates the music’s “high lyricism and dazzling virtuosity”.
It’s superbly worked out, not only showcasing the brilliance of the Tredegar players, but also satisfyingly working through the large-scale scheme with vivid musical ideas. The orchestra generally has a subsidiary role, rarely taking the spotlight after the opening moments, though “concerto grosso” is perhaps a bit of a misnomer, for there isn’t the to-and-fro between the band and the orchestra associated with the baroque form. The fourth movement is its expressive heart, with long-limbed melodic lines and dense chorales which eventually evaporate into a series of flashy cadenzas, before the brief toccata-like finale. Higgins supplied the band’s encore too – a gently sentimental arrangement of the Welsh folk song Ar Lan y Môr, conducted by its music director Ian Porthouse.
Bancroft followed the premiere with Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, in a performance that was impressively well sustained and delivered with tremendous panache by BBCNOW. It only faltered in the most unlikely of places, the March to the Scaffold, taken just a bit too fast to extract its full grand-guignol effect, but the final Witches’ Sabbath was certainly worked to a suitably hysterical climax.
• Available on BBC Sounds. The BBC Proms continue until 10 September.
