The programme was arranged in chronological order, the first half comprising music from William Byrd (1543-1623) to Kenneth Amis (b. 1970 and still playing the tuba in the Empire Brass, thank you very much). After opening with Byrd, they continued with a transcription of the Violin Concerto in C (Op.6 No.5) in its four-movement entirety by Albinoni and yes, the audience clapped after each movement; not that Rolf Smedvig didn't hint to the audience to "encourage us between the movements".

Rolf Smedvig, with Ken Amis and Marc Reese, in keeping with the informal mien of the concert, would step forward to introduce each piece before it was played. This not only established a very charismatic rapport between performer and audience, it was doubly important in lieu of not having any detailed programme notes in the handouts (just musician bios and a list of the two night's programmes). The haste in prepating the handouts were painfully obvious in typos along the lines of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1875) and Luciano Berio (b. 1970).

For the Albinoni concerto, their remarkable talent was to produce a brass chorale with their instruments that came across as five clear, separate strata of sound, with the first trumpet as concerto and second trumpet as ripieno, and the other three instruments playing the continuo or doubling the ripieno as required. There is an art in classical heavy metal - and these guys could write the proverbial book on it.

The group sashayed through a Scarlatti Sarabande and a Dvorak Slavonic Dance, before adopting a different tack for two impressionistic Debussy pieces. The first half then concluded with the allegro con brio final movement of Ken Amis' Brass Quintet No.1 and written as part of his coursework in university. (Mr Amis holds a Masters in Composition, as the bio tells us.)

The second half saw the Empire Brass take to the stage with a change of shirts, from all-black to "faded-tone" shirts. As before, the group sauntered out and began without ado: the Hamilin Gigue by Praetorius, followed by a Gigue from Anthony Holborne (1560-1602).

Strangely, Smedvig informed the audience that the Holborne Gigue was written in 1487, which distinctively does not match with the given years of Holborne's existence. Still, they did justice to the Gigue, finishing with a dose of humour at the abrupt ending, sufficient to bring a smile to SSO Programme Notes author John Howard who was sitting close by.

Smedvig introduced the next work, the Farandole from the opera L'Arlesienne, as an "orchestral work" by Bizet - not exactly inaccurate, but not exactly otherwise, either. More surprisingly, the high quality of the playing started to deteriorate and noticeably, too. The horn, already disadvantaged by its bell perpetually facing the back of the stage, was at times in danger of being drowned by the other instruments. Then the piccolo trumpet failed to hit the last (high) note cleanly.

The Fantasia on Greensleeves by Vaughan Williams was even less enjoyable. The opening of the piece was attacked with a zeal better reserved for loud fanfares, the transition into the Lovely Joan exposition was ungainly and the overall impression that resulted was VW watered-down into a "classical lollipops" treatment that made up in volume what it lacked in subtlety. Again, there were wrong notes played - you could tell the group had switched from a "difficult, serious music" mode to "let's have fun", but surely not such basic technical mistakes ?

The two following Russian and Arabian Dances (from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker) were hardly an improvement; the fortissimos were brash and a kid sitting in DD8 went to sleep on his mother's lap. One senses that perhaps not all classical works, least of all European mid-19th century music, were conducive to the Empire Brass' pops-style transcription and performance.

The conclusion of the programme was dominated by quote great American composers unquote. First to bat was Gershwin's Prelude II, which saw a remarkable improvement in the performance: the trombone, coming forward to perform "solo", injected a mellow, bluesy feel albeit the first trumpet, following suit, could not quite match; some of the idiomatic quasi-jazz nuances just weren't coming.

Lenny Bernstein's rambunctous America from West Side Story was next. Another bushel of wrong notes amidst the cut-and-thrust of instrumental dialogue, with the tempo increasing steadily as the players rushed towards the end.

The Empire Brass's tongue-in-cheek approach to classical hits was confirmed by their rendition of Seventy-Six Trombones from Meredith Wilson's quintessential American musical The Music Man. As Smedvig quipped in the intro, "...this arrangement by Ken Amis, with all seventy-six trombone parts taken by (here, he pointed at Mark Hertzler, the trombonist)."

This was an understatement. Hertzler, apart from showing some slide gymnastics that was visually as pleasing as it was aurally, displayed a triple-tonguing technique that sounded as if two instruments were being played simultaneously, one on the melody and the other on scalar roulades. The audience broke into spontaneous applause once during the music, and twice more during the - I'm not kidding - cadenza.

And that wasn't even the end. The work to cap the evening was the traditional Carnival of Venice (also known as the children's song My Hat It Has Three Corners) in an increasingly and extraordinarily difficult progression of variations on the theme. Smedvig came to the fore, variously demonstrating legato scalar passages on one-sixteenth notes, then rapid-fire phrases of one-thirty-second notes of varying dynamics, then an immaculate triple-tonguing display, as Hertzler had just done, to make one trumpet sound like two, which itself was worth the price of admission.

There were two encores, after Smedvig twice teased the audience, "We've come all this way, may we play one more piece ?" The first was Gershwin's Summertime (and also on the next day's programme); the second was the Basil Street Blues, in Dixieland dress. The applause just went on and on, and afterwards the audience crowded into the side corridor for post-concert autographs.

www.AmisMusicCircle.com for musical compositions and arrangements by Empire Brass tubist, Kenneth Amis.

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