IF ANYONE harboured the thought that brass is brass is brass then this feast of sound should have quickly scotched that idea.

This brass quintet produces the most melliferous, rounded, solid sound you could ever wish to hear.

A cleverly conceived programme, from Andrea Gabrieli’s ricercar, almost experimental, exploration of a motif, written in 1589, to a Timothy Jackson work of merely five years ago, was a calling card, a living advertisement, for this genre.

And there was much humor, too...

Favourites one must have: Charles Ives’s Variations on the tune America, before it became our national anthem, had some warm melodic interchanges.
The pairing of JS Bach’s Fugue in C with an equally magnificent fugue with the same title - by none other than Shostakovich - but without a single accidental soon became evidence of brilliant programming.

And, as Onyx themselves admitted, the piece to which they always return, Sir Malcolm Arnold’s Brass Quintet No 1, is just undiluted heaven for brass players; let alone the audience.

Arnold, himself a brass player, sets immense challenges; and surmounting those is the bread and butter of this quintet.

They are not simply excellent musicians; they are so approachable and human, even to the extent of mingling with the audience in the interval.
What a difference that makes.