One Star, Sailing West (Philip Wilby) - David Thornton, euphonium

This performance was given at the International Euphonium & Tuba Festival held at Emory University, Atlanta during June 2018. The pianist is Keith Teepen.

One Star: Sailing West, composed specially for flugelhorn soloist Zoe Hancock, is the latest in a substantial series of concertos and concert pieces that Philip Wilby has created for the principal players at the Black Dyke Band.

The music was inspired by an attempted sailing voyage round the Cornish peninsula. When the weather took a turn for the worse, the boat, with some of the Wilby family on board, took shelter in Cardiff Bay.

We join the musical journey in untroubled waters, with some beautiful melodic writing for the soloist, the delicacy of the sound-scape is a world away from the highly-charged writing of some of Wilby’s earlier concertos. Soaring flights of melody flow into an accompanied cadenza that explores the whole range of the instrument, leading to a substantial and dramatic central episode.

We are now in choppier waters. The writing is highly virtuosic and given the restraint with which the supporting material has been voiced, every note is clearly heard. Just as the surges of tutti sound threaten to overwhelm the soloist’s waves of rapid figuration, the music is completely transformed.

We have entered calmer, sheltered waters. The music dies away to nothing in one of the most beautiful and wistful endings in all of Philip Wilby’s brass music.