The High Aesthetic Band? Verdi's opera La forza del Destino didn't reach a British theatre until 1867, but, within a few months of its premiere at St Petersburg five years earlier, it was heard all over the north of England - in James Smyth 's arrangement for brass band. Roderick
Swanston, Trevor Herbert ,
Dave Russell and Cyril Ehrlich look into the social history of the brass band movement in 19th-century Britain, the first mass involvement of ordinary working-class people in instrumental art music anywhere in the world. Producer David Gallagher
See also Brass Roots, Thursday
1.00pm