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Top middle: Our man of brass, Harry Sterndale Hurst

The Trumpet Shall Sound! Continuing my recollections of fifty years' ago when I deputised for Dr Sargent in a Messiah performance in Eastbrook Hall Bradford, my mind leaps at once to John Palin, the celebrated trumpeter in the North in those days.

John was a corpulent figure with the longest imaginable trumpet, and he had played The Trumpet Shall Sound more times than he could remember: and as for me? I was conducting the Northern Orchestra for the first (and last!) time. I can see him now looking questioningly at me! I was on trial!

I was much more at ease with an amateur trumpeter in my Belle Vue Evening Institute Orchestra on Manningham Lane, Bradford. They played for me my arrangement of Trumpet of God Sound High at a Church Missionary Society Meeting in Church House and everybody joined in happily! A baker from Thornton sang for me Frances Allitsen's The Lord is my Light on that occasion.

It goes without saying that Malcolm Sargent stirred up the trumpets when occasion demanded. It was in The Flying Dutchman that Sargent wanted a section of Sailors' Chorus included which we understood had been cut.

At the one rehearsal the gentlemen were having difficulty getting it right, and Sargent allayed their fears by assuring them that the orchestral storm would rage more fiercely on the night, and sure enough - it did!

Mark you, to give the impression that Sargent was slipshod as well as 'flash' would be the opposite of the truth, for he made the most meticulous preparations - but more of that anon.

Reverting to the trumpet theme, my earliest recollection goes back to a William Rees performance of Messiah in Manchester in my early teens, and an unforgettable rendering of I know that my Redeemer Liveth by Isobel Baillie at the same concert.

Although I myself was never a trumpeter, perhaps it is not surprising that I found myself Chairman of the Brass Band Association of Yorkshire Schools for about ten years and saw the flowering of School and Brass Bands all over Yorkshire in miraculous fashion.

Many will remember the Atkinson brothers at summer schools. Tom Atkinson was my first peripatetic brass teacher in Bradford, and his son was a pupil of mine, who later became Principal Tuba for BBC Northern Orchestra, and taught at Huddersfield School of Music.

As an organist I have always enjoyed the trumpet stops - when in tune! I thrill at the sound of the Tuba Mirum in York Minster, and I recall the Tuba on the solo manual on the Willis organ in Whitworth Hall Manchester University where I practised.

It was and still is on a 20 inch wind pressure. In those days there was a feeder blowing apparatus with direct current. To turn the organ on there were three large brass levers to manhandle over innumerable studs with sparks flying everywhere! It must have made a man of me (or did it?!) Nor could I resist the trumpet stops on the Bradford Cathedral organ where I was deputy organist.

I must have disturbed many a worshipper. Mr Simpson the jovial church warden preferred the full organ to the still small voice, and said 'let it rip', and I would extemporise on Lord Enthroned in Heavenly Splendour to please him, (not, I hasten to add, up to the standard of present day Nuremburg competitors!)

Since those days the console has been moved to the opposite side of chancel, but my pedal trombone is still there! The organ sounds finer in the enlarged Cathedral space. Just for the record I was Parochial Church Council Secretary when the architect - Sir Edward Maufe's plans for the Cathedral were being considered.