The inaugural “Scotland meets Vienna” concert was held in January 2007 and featured the combined talents of the West Lothian Schools Brass Band and West Lothian Schools Wind Ensemble, conducted by Nigel Boddice MBE and Andrew Duncan respectively. Nigel Boddice had intimated his intentions that this concert should become a regular feature in the calendar as a “New Year” concert, but this year the Brass Band were joined by the West Lothian Schools Fiddle Group and the West Lothian Schools Guitar Ensemble.
West Lothian Council did their best to ensure that your reporter nearly missed the performance due to a seating mix up, but I did eventually get a seat just as Nigel Bodice took to the stage.
Unfortunately, due to the council’s policy on the taking of photographs, there are no images to accompany this report.
With the Regal Community Theatre filled almost to capacity, the Brass Band kicked off the evening’s music in Celtic mood with “Skirl” by A. Street. This was followed by “Rowan Tree” arr. by Adrian Drover and featured the band’s principal horn player, Ruth Glenn. Keeping up the Scottish theme, the band then played an excerpt from Braveheart. The band then featured their principal trombone player, Ross Learmonth in Alan Fernie’s arrangement of “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning”. Another favourite piece followed - Eric Spence’s ‘Alone With My Thoughts’, arranged by A. Duncan and featuring the vocal talents of Nicole Waddell (normally 2nd trombone) who was joined by Rebecca Doolan (2nd Cornet) and Brendan Glenn (1st Horn) and featuring the obligatory bagpipes at the finale.
The West Lothian Schools Fiddle Group then added to the Scottish flavour contributing three items to the evenings entertainment before the Brass Band rounded off the first half of the performance with the rousing “Victory” from Peter Graham’s “Cry of the Celts”.
The second half of the concert began with three contributions from the West Lothian Schools Guitar Ensemble. It was then back to the Brass Band to give the evening a Viennese flavour and they began with the well known “Radetsky March” by Johann Strauss. The it was the turn of Richard Strauss next as the band then played the “Tritsch Trarsch Polka”, the“Champagne Polka” and the “Blue Danube” waltz.
Another current band favourite featured next, a performance of ‘Flying Mallets’ featuring, so we were lead to believe, a Triangle solo by one of the trombone players, James Farrell, who unfortunately didn’t seem to be able to correctly identify said triangle! In actual fact, the piece featured the magnificent talents of percussionist Calum Gardiner on Xylophone, although James did manage to correctly find the triangle for the final note!
Earlier in the evening, Nigel Boddice had suggested the Brass Band and the Fiddle Group should perform together and that’s exactly what they did for the finale, returning to Peter Graham’s “Cry of the Celts” for “Breakout”. This was followed by the traditional “Auld Lang Syne”.
Brass and Wind Bands were joined once again by Graeme Drummond on the bagpipes for that The evening was rounded off with the most rousing of encores - “Highland Cathedral”, again featuring the combined Brass Band, Fiddle Group and bagpipes.
An rousing and emotional finale to an excellent evening’s entertainment.
