Wilfred Heaton: Contest Music

This is a (not very good quality) recording of Wilfred Heaton's Contest Music. It comes from a broadcast on the BBC Radio 3 Bandstand programme, broadcast on 3rd May 1980. The performance is by the Desford Colliery Band, conducted by Howard Snell. I think that it was this performance which brought the work to wider attention, and led to it being recognised as the modern masterpiece it is. The music was only in manuscript, and one or two differences in this performance and the published version are clearly audible. The other work in this radio programme was another piece which had been lost and forgotten, but is now regarded as another important piece in the brass band repertoire - Ralph Vaughan Williams' overture Henry the Fifth. What a broadcast!