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Described as ‘easily the classiest brass ensemble in Britain’ by BBC Music Magazine, Onyx Brass continues to be the leading light in establishing the brass quintet as a medium for serious chamber music, presenting it in the entertaining and articulate style that has become the group’s trademark. For this, its third recording for Chandos, Onyx Brass presents a programme steeped in the German romantic tradition. Arrangements for small ensemble of works by Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Rubinstein, and Franz demonstrate the musicality and virtuosity of the group, as well as a wide expressive and textural range. The programme opens and closes with three large-scale works by Richard Strauss, in which the quintet is joined by a host of other top UK brass players and the conductor John Wilson. Festmusik der Stadt Wien for brass and timpani, written for the city of Vienna, is the only original composition: all the others are arrangements made by members of the group. Captured in Surround Sound and available as a hybrid SACD, this is a must have album for brass music enthusiasts and fans of chamber music alike.
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Reviews
Winner of Band & Ensemble CD of the Year 2021
British Bandsman – December 2021
“…The program opens with a spectacular reading of Strauss’s Festmusik der Stadt Wien (1943), the Onyx players augmented by the Septura Brass… The lyrical passages are heartfelt, and each fanfare section is more thrilling than the previous… The program ends with Strauss’s remarkable Zwei Gesange (1897), originally for 16-part mixed choir. It would take a superb vocal ensemble to pull this difficult work off. These brass players handle its demands with ease.”
Barry Kilpatrick – American Record Guide – September/October 2021
Performance ***** Recording ****
“… The quintet arrangements are … ingenious in rendering the piano textures of Schumann’s inventive Impromptus on a theme of Clara Wieck, and of the Rubinstein Nocturne, thanks to Onyx’s deftness of articulation. Again, the Festal Music for the City of Vienna may not be top-drawer Strauss, but its sequence of fanfares and hymnodies are more cogent and less inflated than many of his ceremonial pieces, and performed here with crackling attack. And the playing in the arrangements of the Two Songs is extraordinary… in Chandos’s typically full recorded acoustic, the sheer glory of sonority in the climaxes of the more eventful Hymne is quite overwhelming.”
Bayan Northcott – BBC Music magazine – July 2021
“… John Wilson leads a vivid performance with attractive lyrical byways and a rousing conclusion … The recording made in the Church of St Augustine in Kilburn, captures all the performances with demonstration-quality levels of transparency, richness and presence.”
Christian Hoskins – Gramophone magazine – June 2021
“A rare, late outing into brass music by Richard Strauss partnered with an intriguing programme of arrangements on this imaginative new disc.” ****
Robert Hugill – PlanetHugill.com – 8 June 2021
“… this is a must have album for brass music enthusiasts and fans of chamber music alike.”
Graham Williams – HRAudio.net – 4 May 2021
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