ROYAL BESSES O’ TH' BARN BAND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 813, 12 March 1910, Page 2

ROYAL BESSES O’ TH' BARN BAND.

Considerable interest, is being evinced throughout the district at the return of the famous Royal Besses o’ th’ Barn Band, and universal satisfaction created with the prospects of a concert in Foxton on Tuesday, March 22nd, at 1 p.m. The Besses 0’ th’ Barn returns to Australasia with an hereditary reputation as one of the finest—if not the best—brass band extant. When it is remembered that a band consisting of 33 performers and a conductor can, with only six different brass instruments and drums, produce musical effects in gradation and colouring from the softest pianissimo up to the crash of the fortissimo, including the simple harmonies of a popular hymn and the weird grandeur of Wagner’s musical mythology, it can be readily understood that such results would give the performers world-wide reputation. Every performer in the Band is, and must be, a consummate artist to arrive at such a standard of musical perfection, from the artist drummer to the solo cornet. It is said to be a performauce in which the lip, tongue. and fingers, are equal in facility and delicacy of rendition to the fingers only of the great artists of the organ, piano, and violin. There is no hitch, no hesitation, not the smallest indication of executive difficulty by any member of the Baud, eveu in the most florid rush of instrumentation ; not the faintest effort or unnecessary gesticulation on the part of the conductor (Mr Alexander Owen). There is no undue prominence of any instrument, an absolute balance is preserved p’oducing a magnificent combination with harmonious results. Full particulars in Tuesday’s paper.