Band back homefor town festival

Arundel’s Hanover Band will be making a major contribution to its home-town festival, with three concerts over three days.

The first in St Nicholas Church, on Saturday, August 24 at 3pm, is entitled Mozart’s World: I and continues a Mozart project which will lead to a double CD release, probably in the spring.

Haydn’s Overture to Orlando Paladino will be followed by Mozart ‘s Clarinet Concerto in A K.622 and his Horn Concerto No.4 K.495 in Eb in a programme which also includes Haydn’s Symphony No.100 ‘Military’ in G.

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Philip Eastop will play natural horn in a concert conducted by Benjamin Bayl – all part of what Hanover Band administrator Stephen Neiman calls a mini-Mozart festival.

“We are recording all the Mozart horn concertos with Philip, and on August 24 we will do the fourth.

“We will record them in October. It will be two CDs, and I expect that they will probably be out in the spring. It’s the second time we have recorded all of them. The first recording was in 1989, and it will be interesting to see how the critics compare them.

“The first recording was with a fantastic horn played called Anthony Halstead who will be conducting these recordings in October.

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“Musicians review their approach to things regularly. The personalisation of the concert is contained in the cadenza where the orchestra stops playing and the soloist takes over for a minute or a minute and a half. He plays a short interlude, and it is this cadenza that makes each performance by different soloists individual and original.

“The way it works is that the Hanover Band is an orchestra, and Philip Eastop wants to set down his understanding of these concertos. He has never recorded them before, and so he comes to us and says that he wants to do it and asks if we want to work with him. And that’s what happened.”

The second of the Hanover Band’s three Arundel Festival concerts will be on Sunday, August 25 at midday in St Leonards Church, South Stoke, near Arundel, and will be called Mozart’s World: II, featuring Hummel’s Clarinet Quartet in Eb and Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A K.581.

This time the performers will be the Band’s principal players: Peter Hanson (violin), Kelly McCusker (violin), Daniel Shilladay (viola) and Catherine Rimer (cello) with Colin Lawson on clarinet.

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The third concert sees them return to Arundel’s St Nicholas Church, on Bank Holiday Monday, August 26 at 7.30pm for a programme entitled Hanoverian Splendours

The programme will be: Handel: Water Music Suites Nos 1&2; Boyce: Symphony No.5 in D; Handel: Royal Fireworks Music; and J S Bach: Oboe and Violin Concerto in C.

The night will feature Peter Hanson on violin and Joel Raymond on oboe. Benjamin Bayl will be director/harpsichord.

“If you like, a lot of what we are doing is restructuring ourselves with main-core repertoire,” Stephen said. “During the late 80s and 90s, the Hanover Band was working six or seven times a month and was responsible for full-time income for a lot of our players. When there was a change in direction in the band in the late 90s, we dropped off the circuit a bit, but the impetus created by the Arundel patronage that we have means that we are beginning to motor. There are 28 concerts this year altogether and a similar number for next year.”

Tickets for all three concerts on 01243 813595 or www.chichestertickets.co.uk. Full details of the Arundel Festival on www.arundelfestival.co.uk.

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