Authentic Vinter still proves elusive at St. George’s Hall

by Kenneth Crookston

After the recent Royal Northern College of Music Festival of Brass, it was suggested by this writer that the overall (but not exclusively) meagre standard of performance in the tribute to Gilbert Vinter that took place over that entire weekend may have been a consequence of underestimation of the music’s content and lack of available preparation time, a hypothesis made all the more likely by the complex nature of much of the other music programmed in Manchester. 

Although disappointing, such underachievement is at least understandable, but six or seven weeks later, when the leading bands in the UK are all now, in theory at least, in tip-top shape for arguably their most pressurised and important performances of the year, the ones that will determine if 2009 is to be a year of real promise on the contest stage or one that will best be forgotten when the history books are written, reasonable excuses for underperforming are a bit more thin on the ground.

So it was that, last Sunday night in St. George’s Hall in Bradford, more major casualties were added to the growing list of ‘name’ bands that won’t be going for a blow down Kensington way in October. The twice recent Champion Band of Great Britain, Grimethorpe Colliery, and the perennial crowd favourite, Brighouse and Rastrick, were among those that fell victim to a piece that, almost 50 years after its composition, has yet again proved to be a more than worthy choice for the Championship Section bands in the UK. Salute to Youth has enough ‘banana skins’ to trip up even the best of them, but the musical weaknesses currently being uncovered by Vinter’s most challenging test-piece are concerning to say the least. From the opening cornet fanfare, which was either too imposing or even untuneful in many performances, to the syncopated bass feature in the closing bars of the piece, which occasionally left a picture in the mind of an entire bass section tumbling down a flight of stairs, a myriad of traps carefully laid by the composer claimed victim after victim on a day that many will want to put behind them.

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