Stamford Chamber Orchestra at the Stamford Arts Centre
Review of the Stamford Chamber Orchestra concert at the Stamford Arts Centre on Saturday 21st March 2009.
Sometimes a critic is prevented from attending a function they are supposed to write about. In such a case subterfuge or downright fraud is resorted to. The latter was beautifully depicted in a Peter Sellers and Mai Zetterling comedy Only Two Can Play, in which Peter Sellers was supposed to write a crit on a local drama society production, but was persuaded by Mai Zetterling to be 'otherwise engaged' with, of course, disastrous consequences.
In my case the 'otherwise engaged' was being not well enough to attend the Stamford Chamber Orchestra's (SCO) spring concert at the Arts Centre on 21st March, which I was supposed to review. I resorted... no not to fraud... to a kind of subterfuge. I persuaded my wife, Maggie, to arm herself with a cassette recorder and be as it were the 'live' half of the team, while I remained at home nursing my ailment and, of course, feeling ever so sorry for myself.
There is a distinct advantage in attending a concert by proxy, double in this case. Maggie brought both the recording and her own impressions back. This meant I could repeat the recording at will which I did (a built-in compliment to the performers I might add) and enhance my impressions with Maggie's 'live' views.
When looking for a piece with which to open a symphony concert one is planning, there are many things to consider, such as suitability to the rest of the programme, or difficulty gradient, bearing in mind the limited rehearsal time, and one invariably settles for something like a selection from the Slavonic Dances by Dvorak, which you can pleasantly punt through as if evoking reminiscences of a wistful holiday on the mighty Vltava in Prague. And that is exactly how the three dances from his op. 72 were played by the SCO. "Schoen" Brahms, who was a fan of Dvorak's, could have said commenting on the performance. He, or rather, his Hungarian Dances were the inspiration for Dvorak's Slavonic ones. He took the trouble not to give the game away, and they remain through and through Slavonic which the SCO underlined beautifully.
French by the German Richard Strauss was the sound in the next piece: Dance Suite after Couperin. For Strauss the inspiration to compose or rather recompose the original keyboard suite for orchestra meant keeping the original, but with a certain difference: Couperin is there fully in tact mordents and all, but although all the "right notes are there they are not exactly in the right order". Nevertheless Straus does not make Couperain his own like Stravinsky does with Pergolesi (and 'friends') in his Pulcinella Ballet In Strauss's piece under discussion we are dealing with quasi neoclassicism: two musical universes Couperin's and Strauss's running parallel. Bearing all this in mind the SCO performance was stylish with courtly grandeur and attention to detail. 'mordents and all'. One could hear the two composers together and separately at the same time. No mean achievement. But it wasn't just this surface layer that impressed. The attention to delicate instrumental colouring, the careful balance in the Carillion with the celeste and the harpsichord bubbling away, beautifully poised concertante wind instruments counterpoints allowing the occasional ever so slightly raucous brass to make its Straussian presence heard not forgetting the full bodied rich sound of the strings.
A special mention must be made of the SCO leader Nan Ingram's violin solo playing. The violin has a reputation of being somewhat overemotional, to which Hollywood movies are an ample testimony. Couperin's time had none of it. The violin then was more of an astringent instrument, more like a village fiddle, and if you want your solo to soar above the Straussian lipids, you play like Nan did - razor edge pure and singing.
Just because the last work bears the tag 'Symphony' don't think it's all over with the dancing. The moment the SCO under the expert hands of its conductor Christopher Brown struck up the vibrantly joyous opening of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony one could picture the twenty year old composer singing and dancing in the... sunshine. He says in a letter that he was in Naples for the second movement, evidently a sombre occasion with the slow 'walking bass' underpinning the interlaced tunes (one of them having to do with murky doings in Goethe's Faust). All of this was clearly to be heard on the recording; "unflinching" was Maggies' 'live' impression. The walking bass can easily become a bit of a plod exerting. Its gravitational pull on the melodic superstructure. Not in this performance - it was given a feel of a compliant ostinato enhancing the solemnity of the whole, and when this idea moved out of its bass domain it was given its due full exposure .
When is a minuet neither a minuet nor a scherzo? When it takes place in Mendelsohn's Fourth Symphony. One could almost hear him thinking: "I suppose I'd better write a third movement". What he came up with is a dance for portly aristocracy, none of your rococo gracefulnes, what with those hunting fanfares in the trio? It's as if he had moved north to Bolzano on the Swiss border. Again the composer's intentions were picked up dutifully in the performance especially towards the end when the 'hunters' couldn't wait to jump into the Salterello.
Salterello is a medieval cousin of the tarantella. It's more of a gallop really, which our merry band segued into with such a gusto that Maggie got worried about the speed limit. "I know it's marked Presto" said she "but this! Listen to it! And they didn't come unstuck! It was so exciting!".
Perhaps they didn't come unstuck and kept up the excitement because of the Beecham effect. You see SirThomas Beecham didn't believe in too much rehearsing. In his opinion a certain economy with zeal kept the orchestra on its toes. On one occasion the celebrated conductor decided not to do a run through Haydn's Surprise Symphony which got the principal oboist of the orchestra rather worried - he didn't know the work. "Well you are in for a great surprise".
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Stamford
Monday 28 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 25 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 11 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North east
