Prelude – The truth from above

In his Prelude – The Truth from Above, outstanding arranger and curator Paul Hindmarsh has distilled the essence of a timeless Christmas classic by Ralph Vaughan Williams into five minutes of ravishingly unforgettable music for brass band.

The variants of the Herefordshire tune popular from the Fantasia on Christmas Carols and The Oxford Book of Carols are skilfully and stylishly woven together, from an evocative opening to an ecstatic, multi-layered coda. Unerringly true to the timeless spirit of the original, with the added beauty of the brass-band sound at its most sonorously grave and haunting, Prelude – The Truth from Above may be performed separately, or as the first of two preludes, preceding Paul’s arrangement of Rhosymedre from the Three Preludes Founded on Welsh Hymn Tunes, also available from Stainer & Bell.