Tony Banks - Five (2018)

The impetus for Tony Banks (Genesis) new orchestral album Five was a commission for the 70th Cheltenham Music Festival in 2014, for which Banks composed the original version of what now appears as the opening track of the new recording, Prelude to a Million Years. Then it was entitled Arpegg and received its world première on Saturday 5 July 2014 with Maxime Tortelier conducting the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

The final naming of the individual pieces has come only recently but confirms a distinct feeling of a journey. The organically developing overture, Prelude to a Million Years, leads to youthful bravado in Reveille, complete with virtuoso trumpet solo (Shakespeare’s fourth ‘act’ from All the world’s a stage perhaps).* A more settled existence – perchance marriage and family life – necessitates Ebb and Flow, where the oboe and saxophone offer a mellower gloss, before leading to Autumn Sonata, a time for reflection, and the choral apotheosis that is Renaissance. Each of the pieces can stand alone, but they also work as a cohesive whole. And, while on Six Banks had been happy to stand back and offer no instrumental contribution at all (“it had always been an ambition of mine to have an album of my music on which I’m not playing”), here on Five listen carefully for the piano parts as they come directly from Banks’ original demos, skilfully incorporated in the final orchestral sound mix.

The arpeggio-inspired Cheltenham piece opens with C major chord which isn’t a C major chord, as it is without any third (i.e. neither major or minor). The seventh that goes against it gives it a Blues feel. Banks had toyed with a couple of different ideas for the movement before choosing one, but he didn’t waste the other idea, as it became the basis of Ebb and Flow , which follows after the more combative Reveille. Autumn Sonata is almost completely diatonic (the piano’s ‘white notes’) – Ingman detects an overt English idiom here – which contrasts with the eastern influence of Renaissane, composed in Dorian mode, with a low drone to start and both the cor anglais and duduk colouring the choral contribution.