Rhian Samuel: Dovey Junction. Brass Quintet

Score and Parts
Scenes from Welsh life and landscape are a frequent source of inspiration for the music of Rhian Samuel, and, in Dovey Junction, the joyful atmosphere of families en route to the Welsh seaside via the little west-coast railway line is the cue for a crackling scherzo for brass quintet.

A snappy rondo theme insists on dressing up in a different texture each time it returns. In between, pithy staccato phrases for trumpets are the setting for more cantabile figures from horn and trombone, and a brief and bluesy episode for muted solo trumpet suggests lazy days on the beach, or grown-up nostalgia for holidays long past. But the energy and sense of expectation remain unstoppable from the first bar to the last, and all five instruments sweep the music into a furious coda that ends the work in riotous high spirits.

Dovey Junction was written for performance by Borealis Brass (Alaska) at the UNESCO World Forum on Music, Los Angeles, USA in October 20005, at the invitation of the Fondazione Adkins Chiti: Donne in Musica, (Rome).