When you read the name German Brass, you know just where you’re at: here are musicians who can conjure up the most finely-honed degrees of timbre, volume and pitch that it is humanly possible to produce on brass instruments. It rings true: German Brass represents the hallmark of the highest quality brass music made in Germany – or as Concerti magazine put it: “Trailblazers of the Brass scene”. The ensemble’s last album was all about pre-Christmas anticipation, joyful messages and everything that revolves round Bach, Telemann and Handel. Brass Hommage takes us to the opposite end of the calendar spectrum. Things are colorful, rhythmic, exotic even. After a bombastic introduction by way of Strauss’s Thus spake Zarathustra it’s off to the south and the west, armed with a sun hat and shades with classics ranging from Black Bottom Stomp, via Quien Sera, As Time Goes By, Tico Tico to Oye Como va. This is the perfect programme for hot days and balmy nights. With their virtuosity, their brilliant musicality and their own special charm, they have definitely placed their stamp/made their mark on brass culture. Their declared goal is to reproduce the grand-scale resonant sound of an organ. That’s what inspires German Brass’s arrangers and members to produce that sound which has given this top-flight ensemble an inimitable edge for decades. They have been making German brass history now for more than 40 years. Founded in 1974, they seem not to have grown a day older since then. Proof of that can be seen in their full concert schedule. The fact that the ensemble recruits musicians from Germany’s top orchestras means that they can offer outstanding quality, and their collaboration over decades still has audiences gasping, wide-eyed and perking up their ears to hear this musical cornucopia.
