Conducted by Elgar Howarth

Elgar Howarth

Elgar Howarth was born into a brass band family, becoming principal cornet of the Barton Hall Works Band when he was 14 years old.  His father, the band's conductor, was his only teacher until, at the age of 17, he took trumpet lessons from Cecil Kidd at the Royal Manchester College of Music, by which time he had won the Alexander Owen Memorial Scholarship and written his first piece for brass band.

After studying at Manchester University he became a professional trumpeter, first with the Royal Opera House Orchestra at Covent Garden and later with various London orchestras and ensembles, most notably the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, theLondon Sinfonietta and the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble.  It was with the London Sinfonietta that he made his conducting début in 1969, and he has conducted them regularly ever since.  His career since 1975 has been international, conducting opera and concerts in most European countries as well as appearing regularly with the leading British orchestras and opera companies.

When, in 1972, he was invited to become Music Adviser to the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, he accepted on the understanding that the band would engage wholeheartedly in new, modern scores - often commissions of the most uncompromising virtuosity.

In March 1997 Howarth was recognised for his achievements in the field of Opera and was the recipient of an Olivier Award, with particular reference to his work on Henze's 'Prince of Homburg' and  Zimmerman 'Die Soldaten'.

Wearing his other hat, as W. Hogarth Lear, Howarth himself wrote a series of light pieces which proved popular with television audiences through the Granada Band of the Year Contest.

William Rimmer

In a previous recording Elgar Howarth demonstrated the talents of the most exciting of the great brass bandsmen of the old school, Alexander Owen; the man who held the bridge between the 19th and 20th centuries.  The present disc is dedicated to the work of the first of the new men.  William Rimmer's father was a military bandmaster, and his own conducting career centred on the Military Band at Southport, where he lived.  As a cornetist he played with the best brass bands of the day including Besses, under Owen.  According to legend the two did not get on, Owen developing so famous an antipathy for Rimmer's work that bandsmen were obliged to become Rimmer men or Owen men; there was no avoiding the allegiance to one or the other.

His conducting fame was founded among the bands of his native Lancashire who, with one exception from over the Pennines, provided him with the major first prizes in both London and Manchester between 1905 and 1909, a feat still unequalled.  In 1908 he created Fodens Motor Works Band.  Only one year later they won the Crystal Palace Championship together.  Twenty years on, in the hands of Rimmer's best pupils, the Mortimers, Fodens became the most admired and successful band of all.

Like Owen, Rimmer was a prolific arranger.  Unlike Owen, who composed little, he created a vast catalogue of brass band music ranging from marches, waltzes and solos to great selections from the masters.  The latter formed an essential element of band programmes as late as 1950. Sadly, with today's easy availability of wall-to-wall classics they have fallen into disuse.  Paragons of band scoring, delighting players and audiences equally, they await re-discovery.

Rimmer was a private man who disliked the limelight; a rare disposition for a conductor.  His players loved him.  To those who played for him - and they were still to be found at Fodens in the fifties - he was Mister Rimmer always; a unique figure of admiration, respect and affection.

Always more interested in music than in prizes, Rimmer gave up contesting after his miraculous win with Fodens in 1909.  Competitively, anyway, there was nothing left to achieve.  Thereafter until his death in 1936 his contributions to the world of the brass band were in writing and teaching. Both proved vitally important to the band's of the future.

Harry Mortimer was Rimmer's finest disciple, and it was for HM that one of the pieces here included was written; the unusual Les Zephyrs.  This solo apart, the present disc contains a collection of pieces often heard on the bandstands of the first half of the century.

Conventional?  Yes, but each displaying the restrained musical taste which was Rimmer's personal mark and his permanent contribution to banding everywhere.

For many, Rimmer is The March King.  His marches are wonderful pieces, every one with its own unique personality.  None has the routine formality, the writing to a formula, which we find in the works of other pretenders to the title.  Here are included some we know, like the brilliant Cossack - written for Fodens and faithfully preserved by them to this day - and Slaidburn, equally famous for its tuneful simplicity.  Unveiled too is the forgotten but no less wonderful Salome, in a recording which will surely renew that lady's popularity.  Others equally fine, like Punchinello and the much loved Ravenswood, await the microphone.  I trust the wait will not be prolonged.

The present disc begins with the Patriotic Overture Rule, Britannia, simple music, based on two tunes, one well known and one less so, Arne's Come if you dare!  It contains a really extraordinary curiosity; a cadenza for tenor horn.  With Les Zephyrs among the solos we have Hailstorm - much played by Mortimer with Fodens, though rarely in as complete a form as here - the likeable Arizona Belle and for the Euphonium the Jenny Jones variations.  A rare performance, this, played complete for the first time in many years.  The solo playing is everywhere fine, and the two cornet polkas are notable for their tempo Howarth has here returned the form to its danceable original.  One can hear the notes,  that is always useful.

None of this music is difficult.  Here it is given dedicated performance by band and conductor; bandsmen of today and tomorrow who remember with gratitude an enormous debt to a great bandsman of the long past.

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