Among all the many Chandos brass recordings, each release having played a major role in the label’s successful history, this one may well be the loudest. In the vast acoustic of St Jude’s Church, London, rendered in surround-sound, and in the largest ensemble format to which it has ever expanded, Onyx Brass, under the energetic direction of John Wilson, brings together four dozen fanfares by fourteen British composers of the past century and a half. Including works by Arnold, Bax, Bliss, Imogen Holst Ketèlbey, and Tippett – with numerous premiere recordings, this album is an unmissable celebration of stirring, brilliant, joyous, exciting, varied, sometimes military, and always optimistic music. © Chandos