Instrument: Brass Band

Jakub Hrůša puts a fresh face on two 20th-century milestones, with fiery support from Leonidas Kavakos.

It’s always a heart-warming sight to see so many young people at the Barbican as members of the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain shared the stage with equal composure as the London Symphony Chorus and string players from the LSO.

“None of us have any idea what Parker would have been playing by now: he died 50 years ago. As an optimist I like to think he would have evolved,” Django Bates writes in the programme for Prom 62, remembering a critic’s harsh words regarding a previous Parker-centric performance with a slightly nervous defensiveness. But there’s more in that than there might first appear.

The concert was divided into two clear parts; the first included string quartet pieces by Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly and Sufjan Stevens, and the other half consisted of Planetarium, a multi-dimensional song-cycle for string quartet, trombones, piano, celesta, synthesizer, drums, drum machine, guitar and voice.

Karneval und Klassik, Klassik und Unterhaltungsmusik – dass diese Elemente nicht in Widerspruch stehen, sondern eine so unterhaltsame wie musikalisch hochkarätige Einheit eingehen können, zeigte Blechschaden, das Blechbläserensemble der Münchner Philharmoniker, anlässlich des Faschingskonzerts im Mozartsaal des Mannheimer Rosengartens.