Arranging a string quartet by Shostakovich into a piece for brass septet has a touch of madness about it: surely the two remote sound worlds could never connect. Simon Cox and Matthew Knight, respectively trumpeter and trombonist in Septura, have made a brilliant job of doing just that with the black, elegiac Quartet No 8 Op 110. Sour, fierce string attacks translate convincingly into trumpet blasts. Sonorous chordal passages acquire added depth. The march from Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges is deliciously witty, the Scriabin preludes full of contrast, Rachmaninov’s lovely Vocalise Op 34 No 14 poetic and cup-muted, with two trumpets and two trombones “singing” the vocal line winningly.
