Officially published on 1 October 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of its first performance, Edward Gregson‘s Concertante for Piano and Brass Band is now available exclusively through Morthanveld Publishing.

On of only a limited number of works for this particular combination, the Concertante for Piano and Brass Band joins works by Ray Steadman-Allen, Roy Newsome, Gordon Jacob, Mervyn Burtch and Bramwell Tovey in the small canon of exciting works for piano and brass band. The work has been fully digitally typeset by Paul McGhee in a new 50th Anniversary Composer’s Edition, and now takes its rightful place amongst Gregson’s earliest works as part of his distinguished and influential brass band catalogue.

The work had a number of public performances leading up to a memorable one in the Royal Albert Hall in 1989 as part of the Gala Concert that used to be held after the National Brass Band Championship in the Royal Albert Hall. That year, the ‘centre band’ in the massed bands concert were the GUS Band (then known for sponsorship reasons as ‘Rigid Containers Group Band’!) conducted by the composer’s great friend and champion, Bramwell Tovey, and Edward Gregson himself was the soloist – commercial recordings of this are still available in specialist dealers. Nearly 30 years later Tovey later wrote his own ‘piano concerto’ for brass band, entitled “Pictures in the Smoke”, and it would be interesting to ask him how much Gregson’s predecessor work was on his mind when writing it!

Not longer after that performance, Edward Gregson decided to withdraw the Concertante for Piano and Brass Band from public performance, and has since turned down all requests to perform or record the work – partly because he felt that it didn’t truly reflect his later journey as a composer. However, in his own words “in my now mature years, such concerns have ceased to exist” and Morthanveld are delighted to be involved in printing and distributing this delightful and exhilarating work. Of particular delight is the news that there are already two planned performances including the Welsh premiere – see here for more information, and to order performance parts, rehearsal parts for two pianos and/or study scores click here.