to do brass quintet rep or not to do ...


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Posted by ken k on March 02, 2000 at 23:46:43:

I recently attended a concert by the Epic Brass from the Boston area. They played very well, extremely well I will say. My main beef was with what they played. In an hour and a half concert they played one piece of true brass quintet literature; the final movement of the Malcolm Arnold Brass Quintet. Are groups such as Epic Brass or Canadian Brass or Empire Brass, etc. selling the brass quintet short or helping it when they do a concert of fluff? I understand they do not want to turn people off. I underrstand they have to sell tickets. But I still think they could be a bit more true to the bass quintet genre in picking their lit. They did the typical renaissance dances, a movement of a Mozart Horn Concerto, a few other typical brass transcriptions, the movement of the Arnold I mentioned and that was it. The rest was rags, marches, jazzy stuff; what I would consider fluff or filler on a program. Would it really have turned the audience off to do the whole Arnold, or a Frackenpohl or an Ewald quintet, or the like? If you went to a string quartet concert or some wind quintet concert I think the performers would not sell their instruments short or underestimate the intelligence of their audience. I understand the brass intruments do not have the repertoire to choose from that the strings and woodwinds have, due to their more recent history. But what about some Civil War era stuff or other 20th century things that are not too difficult to listen to such as a Monteregian Hills or Brass Menagerie, etc. ?
Any thoughts out there in tubadom?
Bored in PA


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