An Evening with Charnwood Orchestra

It's a bitter evening as I shuffle into All Saints Parish Church but the warmth with which I am greeted by Charnwood Orchestra soon puts an end to my shivering. I was fortunate enough, not only to enjoy their superb concert, but also to interview the cello soloist Deirdre Bencsik during the interval.

After having witnessed her outstanding rendition of Kabalevsky's 1st Cello Concerto in G Minor I join her in the sacristy. Deirdre shares with me that it was her decision to perform Kabalevsky. 'I chose it for the audience' she explains, 'I liked it the first time I heard it and so wanted to introduce them to something new that they would like they first time they heard it'. Audience appreciation was evident in the middle movement when their concentration became almost tangible, oozing its way throughout the atmosphere up to the inspiring gothic arches of the church.

Deirdre is quick to compliment the orchestra, and comments on their clear enthusiasm for music. This passion is evident in the faces of the musicians; in the man whose smile falters only when he sets down his violin, in the woman whose eyes twinkle towards her music. Apart from performing, Deirdre has worked as a music therapist which she found incredibly rewarding. 'It doesn't have to be music' she tells me, 'Just a sound. Something to spark a reaction'. Much of her time has been spent working with people unable to speak and she feels that music gives them a means of communication. 'You improvise and keep playing until they react, then develop what it was that initiated that reaction' she explains, 'You join them in their world - don't force them into yours'. The collective sigh of the audience at the end of the concerto proves that Deirdre has the art of musical communication down to perfection.

Sibelius' Symphony in E Minor demonstrated several outstanding clarinet solos by Suzanne Thompson and by the end of the fourth movement the orchestra was reduced to a seething mass of strings, each bow working at lightning speed yet entirely in unison, creating a rippling wave of movement. An impressive performance was also given by conductor, Nic Fallowfield, who allowed the orchestra to play without interfering with the audience' focus.

Khachaturian's Masquerade Suite proved itself to be more familiar to the audience than they appeared to have expected and the initial reaction was that of a wonderful surprise. During the several dance pieces, particularly the final gallop, it was not uncommon to see the audience bobbing along to the upbeat tempo, not bothering to conceal a grin as they did so.

All in all, I can only conclude that Charnwood Orchestra have put on a bold and adventurous programme and more importantly, a great night out.


Genevieve

For anybody who doesn't know concert music - and wants to - the Charnwood Orchestra's opening concert of it's new season would have been a perfect introduction.

The concert consisted of three works: Fingal's Cave Overture, by Felix Mendelssohn; Clarinet Concerto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; and Symphony No 2, by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Fingal's Cave - also known as the Hebrides Overture - is probably among the first ten pieces of music heard by anybody who listens to concert music. The orchestra - conducted by Nic Fallowfield - conveyed the alternating passion and tranquillity of the work, which depicts the sea first crashing, then gently lapping over the rocks around the cave, which is on a remote island off the coast of Scotland.
(Mendelssohn, a German composer who loved Scotland, did visit the cave - but he actually jotted down his idea for the work beforehand!)

I wonder how many people regularly listen to all of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, hearing just the dreamy Adagio, the slow second movement. Soloist Neil Aston surely put the Barrow audience into a very relaxed state.

In selecting a Beethoven symphony, the orchestra might have made a more obvious choice from his best known symphonies: numbers three, five and nine - the last being the choral symphony. However, no. 2 was a wise choice if the orchestra was trying to attract newcomers to concert music. It is a more approachable work than the 'Big Three' Beethoven symphonies.

The orchestra's next concert - of music by Russian composers - will take place at Emmanuel Church, Loughborough on Saturday, November 19. The orchestra must have a love for Russian music: they presented a similar programme in their last season.


Terry Larkin - Loughborough Echo

Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture to Romeo and Juliet conveys many different moods. The music itself, of course, imparts much of this through tempo, harmony and volume, but any music must be interpreted to bring it to it's full potential. The Charnwood Orchestra produced a subtle and clear interpretation, which was pleasant to listen to, with a wonderfully dramatic depiction of the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. I enjoyed the clarity of the harp, which punctuated the music like the moon through a clear night.
One of his best-known works, Glazunov’s Violin Concerto is full of rich colour, typical of the late Romantic period, creating a rich musical experience.
Violin soloist Gina McCormack gave a simply beautiful performance, well supported by the orchestra, including a wonderful cadenza which danced toward the final movement; orchestra and soloist bringing the piece to a close in an uplifting performance.

A dark section played with an underlying energy began Borodin’s Symphony No2. This energy and movement was perhaps unusually lost in part of the Andante, but returned to bring the piece to a vibrant and emotional climax.

Conductor Nic Fallowfield produced a concert full of lively and expressive performance at All Saints parish church, in which each section of the orchestra could be clearly heard and yet blended to form a cohesive whole. A concert which was full of stimulating sound.

Peter Collett - Leicester Mercury

Earlier this month I heard a musically-illustrated talk about the Russian Dmitri Shostakovich, perhaps the 20th Century’s greatest composer. Great, yes - but many of his 15 symphonies are harsh, reflecting that he worked in times of revolution, warfare, bloodshed and despotism under the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
So it was refreshing to hear the more romantic side of Russian music as presented by the Charnwood Orchestra.

The orchestra, conducted by Nic Fallowfield, began with Peter Tchaikovsky - and they don’t come more romantic than him. They played his Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture - one of many musical works inspired by Shakespeare’s play. The overture is variously elegant, powerful, colourful and lush - qualities conveyed well by the orchestra.

Next came the short Violin Concerto of Alexander Glazunov. The soloist was Gina McCormack, a very attractive artist - and not only musically! Her rendering of the work - previously unfamiliar to me - ensures that I shall enter it in my list of favourite violin concertos.

The concert ended with Symphony No 2 by Alexander Borodin - hard to believe that this enjoyable work was unpopular when first performed over a hundred years ago.

Terry Larkin - Loughborough Echo

AN EVENING of music entited More Magic of Vienna sounds predictable - Johann Strauss, Strauss and more Strauss?

Not so, the Charnwood Orchestra's concert began with the overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor - an opera by Otto Nicolai, based on Shakespeare's play. Nicolai was a German, not a Viennese - but who cares?

The orchestra played a lot of polkas, some like Tritsch-Tratsch and Thunder & Lightning that I knew well - but others that I'd never heard. A polka, by the way, is a Czech dance from the days before jogging-on-the-spot became the recognised form of dancing.

Of course, there were a lot of Strauss waltzes; Roses from the South, Wine, Women & Song and Vienna Blood.

There was the Barcarolle from the opera The Tales of Hoffmann, by Jacques Offenbach - one of the gentlest pieces of music ever written.

At one point conductor Nic Fallowfield dropped his baton. I picked it up and took over from him for a couple of minutes - a new experience! The orchestra didn't go wrong once. Obviously I have a talent for conducting!

The evening almost ended with the world's most famous dance: Johann Strauss's Blue Danube waltz but of course it really did end with the Radetzky March, written by Johann Strauss I, father of the Blue Danube composer.
This is a piece which lends itself to audience participation in the form of lots of hand clapping - and the Humphrey Perkins audience were not slow on the uptake.

This was an evening to persuade people that so-called classical music is not a serious, solemn business and it was indeed a fun evening.

Terry Larkin

The noble and serene qualities needed for peace

CHARNWOOD Orchestra's second concert of its 2010/11 season, which took place in Emmanuel Church, Loughborough, on Saturday, was made up of two perennial favourites and a less familiar work.

They began with Variations on the St Antoni Chorale by Johannes Brahms, otherwise known as ‘Variations on a Theme by Haydn'. In fact, the theme wasn't written by Joseph Haydn - it was an old hymn that he borrowed.
This is one of the most noble and serene pieces of music ever written, and the orchestra, conducted by Neil Aston, fully endowed it with those qualities.

Next came the Triple Concerto, by Ludwig van Beethoven - triple referring to the three solo instruments that it features: violin, 'cello and piano.This is a Beethoven work not played as often as, say, his Emperor Piano Concerto. It is more restrained and elegant and does not have the sledge hammer-blow effect of the Emperor. The orchestra superbly supported the Trio Eluard: Adrian Adlam, violin; Lionel Handy, cello; and Roger Owens, piano.

The concert ended with one of the best-loved musical works: the archetypically English Enigma Variations, by Edward Elgar. The work's original name was Variations on an Original Theme, but it has always been called Enigma because Elgar never revealed what the theme was. Some people thought it was God Save the Queen or Auld Lang Syne - but Elgar denied this! The work has 13 variations dedicated to Elgar's wife and 12 friends.

No one should think this is a sedate work. It has great power, fully brought out by the Charnwood Orchestra, aided by the excellent acoustics of Emmanuel Church - not a building designed with music-making in mind.

Actually, Enigma did not end the concert for the orchestra threw in an encore- another Elgar work, the short Imperial March.

Terry Larkin

Guest conductor Dan Rosina seemed particularly good at interpreting the mood and style changes in the music. The concert opened with Haydn's Symphony No. 80 and the first movement provided an excellent example of exactly this quality. The opening bars were almost Wagner-like in their power, with an instant contrast provided by the delicate woodwind entry.

Teodor Iliescu really sings through his bassoon making a lovely warm smooth sound which had the audience enthralled.

Ending with Schubert's Symphony No. 5 (Dan Rosina again achieving much variety in orchestral colour throughout this delightful work) this was a most enjoyable event.

It is pleasing to report that the church was very full and the audience were able to enjoy a choice of wine or beer during the interval.

Roger Swann

The Charnwood Orchestra's Viennese evening, The Magic of Vienna, was a sell-out, attracting a wide range of ages, but it raised a question - how do people today discover the waltzes and polkas of the Strauss family of Vienna, so familiar to those who grew up with the old wireless for home entertainment?
Radio 2 perhaps? Friday Night is still Music Night, I see. Classic FM maybe. Some of the audience at Humphrey Perkins School were surely hearing this music for the first time. But they must have been impressed by the infectious tunes and playing, helped along by conductor Nic Fallowfield's introductions.

With an early start, two sessions of eight items was not excessive. Fallowfield got the audience to sing or shout as required in a couple of unfamiliar pieces, but almost every famous Strauss piece was there, beginning with the overture to Die Fledermaus, and ending with the Radetzky March, everyone clapping along in traditional style.

Actually it wasn't quite all Strauss. Joseph Lanner, a pioneer of the waltz, got a look in and we would have been poorer without Lehar's Gold and Silver and Emile Waldteufel's The Skaters, French though he was. Nor was it all Johann Strauss the Younger. Joseph's Pizzicato Polka, confidently done, and Eduard's railway piece Bahn Frei made the cut.

The Tritsch-Tratsch Polka sparkled but ultimately the prizes went to the grand favourites, the Emperor Waltz, Voices of Spring and The Blue Danube: The horns wonderfully led into that tribute to Vienna's great river, blue or not, and the playing came close to a genuine Viennese style, if not quite managing the authentic slight
irregularity of beat.

These richly inventive examples edge towards symphonic music whilst keeping their roots in the ballroom. But they and their like have a common bond of sound and rhythm that says 'nineteenth-century Vienna', and are as much of their time and place as rock and roll is of ours.
And so Fallowfield and the Orchestra's Viennese evening succeeded.


A.F.

Some fortunate circumstance must lie behind the appearance of the outstanding pianist Katya Apekisheva with the Charnwood Orchestra in Emmanuel Church. Networking by their conductor Nic Fallowfield, perhaps.

The opening piece, Beethoven's heroic Egmont Overture, was stirringly done, but the performance with Apekisheva of the Emperor Concerto was on a different plane. It had you listening to it as if for the first time.

Here was no run-through or self-indulgent barnstorming, but an interpretation of authority and refinement, alternately powerful, delicate and reflective.

No wonder the full audience was deeply hushed after the first movement, so that the hymn-like adagio followed with profound effect.

And as if the orchestra had not already been inspired, now the strings quietly excelled themselves. The intensity may have relaxed in the finale, but it still rang true. To quote the prestigious magazine Gramo-phone, Katya Apekisheva is 'a profoundly gifted artist' who has 'already achieved artistic greatness'. It was a privilege to hear her again.

For older listeners, Bartok may have been one of the bad boys of modern music, but things have moved on since his death in 1945. In any case, his style softened in his last years.

So while there is nothing inherently difficult for listeners in the Concerto for Orchestra of 1943, nevertheless it was written to show off a great orchestra, the Boston Symphony, and is bound to challenge an amateur band. Textures change constantly, testing the skills and weight of every section.

The Magyar flavour of the Introduction promised much, and the instrumental couples of the second movement were generally in good accord. The outer sections of the Elegy, so reminiscent of Bartok's
1911 opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle, were fine, but the central outburst was not ideally balanced. In the Intermezzo, the interruptions were too polite.

The Finale is the most difficult movement to bring off. It started well and moved successfully into its wild Hungarian dance. There were stunning passages from the brass, but despite Nic Fallowfield's steady beat the tension slackened dangerously at times. All the same, they brought off a decently triumphant conclusion.

If you knew the piece well, you might have been too aware of the faults. If you didn't know it, then who knows? Good on them, anyway.

A.F.

RESPIGHI'S The Birds was an apt choice by the Charnwood Orchestra and their conductor Nic Fallowfield to open their concert in a well-filled Barrow Parish Church.

For some years now their season has begun here with a concert centred on 18th Century music, but has often included later pieces for a classical-sized band.

There was a fashion in the 1920s for creative arrangements of much older music. Stravinsky's Pulcinella is the outstanding example, but the prelude from The Birds did become familiar as the signature tune to Going for a Song years ago on TV. The orchestra's performance was notable for its sensitive dynamics and tone colours, The Dove being particularly lovely.

Haydn's Violin Concerto No. 1 with Nic Fallowfield as soloist/conductor was nothing if not robust in the outer movements. The adagio was in beautiful contrast, the string band's gentle pizzicato accompanying his finely spun solo, even if it was not always spot on. Haydn's good humour broke out in the finale.

For all Ravel's orchestral mastery, his serene Pavane pour une Infante Defunte is always difficult to bring off, and here perhaps could have done with a slower tempo and a more atmospheric acoustic.

But the acoustics were just about right for Haydn's Drum Roll Symphony, No. 103, which found the orchestra in top form. The first movement was skilfully handled, its cheerful allegro so strikingly contrasted with the sombre opening adagio, surprisingly repeated later.
The andante variations were done with great delicacy, the minuet stomped around the ballroom, and it was all brought to a vivid conclusion. How inspired is the way the finale's little horn call releases the movement's theme like a call-sign. Here was a superb celebration of Haydn's bicentenary.


A.F.

Mendelssohn's 1827 overture A Midsummer Night's Dream was a bold choice by Nic Fallowfield for the Charnwood Orchestra's customary start-of-season concert of classically-scaled works in Barrow Parish Church.

Swift and feathery fairy strings hinted at much preparation behind this brisk and joyful performance, which didn't skate over the tender passages either. Sometimes the winds were too strong, diminishing the magic at the close, but balance is tricky in this smallish space.

It was a difficult act to follow. After it, Mozart's Six German Dances from 40 years earlier were an anticlimax, chuntering along agreeably enough but without much characterisation. Yet they were followed by a finely judged Bach Violin Concerto in A minor with Nic Fallowfield taking the solo as well as leading the orchestral strings. Balance and pace were admirable and the music was allowed to speak naturally for itself.

Elgar's Chanson de Matin and Chanson de Nuit in the familiar 1901 orchestral versions were coupled on one of my early 78s, and I doubt whether I have heard them together since. The Charnwood's charming performance of Chanson de Matin brought back memories of teenage musical discovery, but the darker Nuit proved more elusive.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C is a bit of a Cinderella among his nine, even more so than No.2, not because it is less inspired, but because it is overshadowed by the mightier dramas of Nos.3 and 5 and the rest. All the same, Beethoven, already 30 in 1800, is flexing his symphonic muscles, though not perhaps as cautiously as Nic Fallowfield made it seem in the first two movements.

The Allegro could have taken a bit more brio and the Andante a bit more con moto, though the latter's middle section added some deeper character to the charm. But all was transformed in the scherzo-like Minuet and Trio, and especially in the Allegro finale as it charged to its ebullient conclusion. The packed house was well rewarded.
A.F.

What a difference six weeks make.
WHAT a difference six weeks and an utterly different venue made to Nic Fallowfleld's performance of Brahms's Symphony No. 1 with the Charnwood Orchestra. I
n May they aired it in the dry acoustic of a school hall, and much of it sounded limp. Preceding it with a demanding Bartok concerto couldn't have helped.
As the closing work of their annual concert in St James the Greater, it was thoroughly convincing.

For all its impressive resonance, St James is acoustically tricky. The sound gets mushier the further back you go. The front seats are best, and the space around the orchestra ensures that balance and clarity are not compromised. Strings are clear and brass never overwhelming.
The work was the culmination of Brahm's famous struggle to write a symphony to match Beethoven, and struggle informs the outer movements.
The Charnwood's own battle was now largely resolved, never losing momentum in the first movement's challenging neither fast nor slow pace. The tensions and fleeting moods of its drama unfolded persuasively.
Finely managed Brahms's textures are often complex, but in only a couple of passages did they briefly become unclear and fail to make sense. In the finale, the journey from turmoil to triumph was finely managed.
The two inner movements retained the tenderness and grace of previous performances, with expert solos.

Earlier the sizeable audience had been rightly enthusiastic for Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1, with the Charnwood's favourite soloist, Thomas Bowes. Typically of him, the solo was musically pure and technically clean, but not indulgent. I am told that it was excellently projected to more distant parts of the church, even if the sensitively balanced orchestral score was muddied back there. The Charnwood's ability to play very softly was a feature both here and in the Brahms.

The evening had begun with a bright and brisk Fidelio overture. Beethoven almost at once tested the horns to their limit, but they redeemed themselves.

So roll on the new season, beginning in Barrow Church on October 6th with a programme from Bach to Elgar.

A.F.

The Charnwood Orchestra's Sunday afternoon concert under Nic Fallowfield in Derby Grammar School was welcome not least because they and Thomas Bowes were repeating Bartok's Violin Concerto No. 2 which they gave in Emmanuel Church recently.

Local orchestras often play their pieces only once, and this formidable work needs repetition. This concert looked better balanced too, with Brahms' Symphony No.l after the break rather than the Unfinished and some Hungarian Dances. But even bearing in mind the ambience of the school hall, the results were mixed.

Thomas Bowes makes no claims to have been a natural prodigy. Sheer hard graft and belief in the music propel him. You could see it in his face, making the concerto extraordinarily compelling. The acoustics and our nearness to him allowed his every note to be heard, with never a sour one. The orchestral playing, if not always tidy, was otherwise well judged. The performance made the all-important variation element remarkably lucid, and helped to convince me that this lengthy work hangs together better than I had thought.

Liszt's Les Preludes, the opener, was slow to warm up. String themes at first did not sing out in the dry acoustic, but the piece built up impressively. Whether or not we are bothered by its message of life as preludes to the eternal, it remains imposing as pure music, and a reminder of Liszt's huge contribution to the romantic style.

After this, the Brahms First seemed strangely subdued and relaxed, from the opening drum beats through to the great tune of the final allegro. From that point it developed into the imposing culmination that we expect, with fine horn-playing.

Still, there were delights to be had on the way. The andante especially was a nicely paced pastorale with lovely solos, and the grace of the allegretto fitted the spirit of the whole. But it was the underpowered and tension-free first movement that really disappointed.

On 30th June they will play it again in St James the Greater (and Thomas Bowes will be doing the Bruch No.1). How will those drum beats pound out then?

A.F.

The Charnwood Orchestra's remarkable recent ventures with Nic Fallowfield into the early modernist repertoire has continued, this time with Thomas Bowes as soloist in Bartok's Violin Concerto No. 2 from 1938 as the big work in their March concert.

Years ago, in the heyday of the Leicestershire Schools Orchestra, the distinguished violinist Kyung-Wha Chung played it in what is now the Cope Auditorium. I wrote then that it was like being led by the hand through a strange landscape. It is not an easy piece for listeners to grasp, let alone for the musicians to play.

For a start it is forty-odd minutes long, and to my mind suffers from compromises between the set of variations that Bartok wanted and the conventional concerto that the original soloist Szekely preferred. The effect is not exactly start-stop, but rather of episodes which often promise to flower into something grand but instead collapse into a new piece of discourse.

That said, the Magyar-flavoured themes are memorable, and the Charnwood band, aided by Bartok's scoring, always let the soloist be heard, even allowing for Thomas Bowes' closeness to the audience in Emmanuel Church. In any case, his splendidly positive playing did not miss a trick, from the formidably impressive cadenzas to the hushed tenderness of the slow movement. The enthusiastic applause seemed to recognise something of the heroic.

The Hungarian connection had begun with an old war-horse, Liszt's Les Preludes, given a sturdy if inflexibly-paced performance, and concluded with six of Brahms's Hungarian Dances. But these sounded like six encores of variable quality, and Fallowfield's idiomatic changes of pace sometimes eluded the orchestra.

Schubert's Unfinished was deeply satisfying in a finely paced and shaped performance of this mysteriously beautiful torso of a symphony, a musical Venus de Milo that cannot be other than it is. The orchestra produced some wonderfully quiet playing, and the work's scoring ensured that it was free from the brassy harshness the acoustics had thrown up elsewhere. All the same, Emmanuel always seems like the Charnwood's home ground.

A.F.

Fevered imaginations lurked behind the remarkable programme of the Charnwood Orchestra's concert under Nic Fallowfield, given in a well-filled All Saints' Church rather than their usual Emmanuel.

In the 19th century, Berlioz, Wagner and Mahler were controversial modernists. Abandoning pure music, they were inspired by literature, heroics and personal drama, with Goethe's Faust a potent source for all three.

Wagner's A Faust Overture was originally to be a Faust symphony (Liszt achieved that), but although it is now a rarity, it is worth reviving. But it proved too expansive for a concert opener. There was drama certainly, but it needed tightening up. Maybe that was Wagner's fault.

Mahler's innocently titled Songs of a Wayfarer replaced the usual concerto. This short cycle of four songs is no serenade to the beauties of the countryside, however, but the composer's lament for a lost love, with nothing showy about it.

The noted tenor Thomas Guthrie delivered the music beautifully but was singularly reserved. Perhaps standing so close to the front pews was inhibiting, but a little animation might have helped newcomers to the piece. The scoring is not heavy, but occasionally it threatened to overcome him. Doubtless we are too used to a recorded balance.

The very title of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique invited outrage in 1830, not to mention the titles of it's movements, what with a march to the scaffold and a witches' sabbath. Beethoven's Pastoral foreshadowed it, but at the time it must have seemed on the edge of battiness.

This 50-minute journey through the composer's psyche works because it is melodically brilliant and coherent. The orchestra delivered a compelling performance. Nic Fallowfield judged tempi, dynamics and phrasing so that Daydreams and Passions unfolded naturally and the Scene in the country never flagged. Ensemble, noticeably so in A Ball, came a bit loose, but still the waltz flowed splendidly. Nobody shouted 'bravo' at the climactic finish but they deserved it.

A.F.

The end of the concert season is signalled for me by The Charnwood Orchestra's appearance in St James the Greater. This isn't a fluffy "music for a summer evening" affair either, but a full symphony concert with an eye on making the most of the church's rolling acoustics.

No work is better for that than Sibelius's Symphony No.2 of 1902, or at least its finale, where brass and percussion work up a ringing blaze of triumph. If you barely know the piece, that's what you are waiting for, but subtlety lies elsewhere, in the first movement above all, which can seem all hints and fragments.
The genius of the composer and the skill of the conductor lie in developing these into a convincing whole, like a forest growing from scattered seedlings.
The Charnwood's conductor Nic Fallowfield knows that his best chance is to keep the music moving, and so it proved. The orchestra's individual sections and soloists delivered those themes and snippets with their usual skill, and the performance as a whole did achieve a sense of unity.
Though familiarity may have helped listeners, the seeds of the magnificent ending could be sensed in the beginning.

Brahms's Double Concerto from 1887 is always a wonderful surprise. It is just as memorable as his violin concerto, but is obviously rarer because it needs two outstanding soloists.
Happily the orchestra could call on the 'cellist Tim Gill as well as violinist Thomas Bowes, who has played with them previously.

From a seat five rows back in the tricky acoustic of this long church, the orchestral balance with the soloists was admirable. Gill's warm-toned cello playing struck me as the more commanding of the two, but Bowes's steely violin was not overshadowed. Fallowfield and the orchestra had no obvious difficulty with Brahms's writing, and despite the distance from the soloists to the brass, coordination was sound enough.

Berlioz's Royal Hunt and Storm, with its echoes of Beethoven's Pastoral, was a neat choice of opener, giving the horns a well-taken chance to echo through the building. But if finally the Sibelius thrilled the audience, it could not banish memories of the Brahms.

A.F.

Stravinsky's ballet score Petrushka, first staged in Paris in 1911, was the second he wrote for Diaghilev's Les Ballets Russes. In 1950 it was included in the very first batch of long-playing records issued in this country, and a couple of years later I made it my first LP.

Nic Fallowfield chose Petrushka as the finale of Charnwood Orchestra's concert in Emmanuel Church and directed a performance that was remarkably faithful to this extraordinary Tom-and-Jerry score. Bar-by-bar the music reflects the stage action, but its vivid evocations of a Russian Shrovetide fair, the all-too-human drama of the puppet characters, and the dance tunes that time and again emerge from the teeming detail, ensure that it works amazingly well in the concert hall.

The augmented orchestra met the demands of its complex textures and many solos with great confidence. Marguerite Beatson's piano, David Thomas's flute alongside all the woodwind, the brilliant trumpet of Alan Cramp, indeed the whole orchestra, produced playing that was a tribute to the weeks of preparation with Nic Fallowfield. With first Berg and now Stravinsky behind them, perhaps other 20th century modernist masterpieces will be forthcoming.

The audience actually overflowed the church into the reception area. The great draw was Rachmaninov's 1902 Piano Concerto No. 2, which remains hugely popular despite its sentimental cinematic associations, or should I say because of them, though there is far more to it than that.

On her previous appearance, the soloist Katya Apekisheva, a graduate of the peerless Russian school of piano-playing, had dominated Tchaikovsky's No.l, but this time the partnership was more equal. Despite our proximity to the Steinway, orchestra and soloist were nicely balanced. Her lyrical interpretation flowed naturally, with no romantic indulgences that might have caught out the Charnwood band. The strings especially made the most of the gorgeous melodies.

The opening piece was a brilliant Night on the Bare Mountain, in the familiar version that Rimsky-Korsakov made in 1908 of Mussorgsky's 1867 original. But if the Rachmaninov was the crowd-pleaser in this tremendous Russian evening, the Stravinsky was the great achievement.

A.F.

The Charnwood Orchestra has never been more ambitious than in their latest concert under Nic Fallowfield, playing Alban Berg's Violin Concerto of 1935 with James Clark in the solo.
Berg is extraordinary among early modernists. His Wozzeck is the only atonal opera that is established in the opera house and this concerto the only atonal piece with a secure place in the concert hall, and for the same reason. Both deal with human tragedy in powerfully expressionist musical language, and both incorporate tonal melody and harmony to great effect.

Thus the finale of the concerto uses the Bach chorale 'Es ist genug', Christ's last words from the cross, 'It is enough'. In other words. Berg allowed his heart to override twelve-tone principles, and explicitly so in the subtitle, 'To the memory of an angel'. The 'angel', Manon Gropius, the 18 year-old daughter of Mahler's widow and the architect Walter Gropius, had died of polio.

In Emmanuel Church, James Clark, who is concertmaster of the Philharmonia Orchestra, projected the solo well amid the sometimes tumultuous orchestral scoring, though it made it difficult to judge the depth of feeling in his playing. The notes had to speak for themselves. As for the orchestra, the subtle shifts and balances of the first two movements, portraying Manon's life, were less successful than the death-and-consolation of the second half. For instance, it was difficult to pick up the little folk-tune (I listened to one of my recordings first). But once into the bolder outlines of the anguished allegro, it was clear that they had mastered the notes well, and in the heartfelt Bach-inspired adagio the delicate scoring was beautifully done.

Alongside all this angst, Brahm's Academic Festival Overture and Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony were old friends to seek comfort with. The overture quickly settled down after a roughish start, and the symphony proceeded expertly on its genial course in untroubled fashion. Against Berg's mortal outbursts, Beethoven's thunder and lightning seemed a harmless diversion. 'Happy and thankful feelings after the storm' indeed, but the concert was a remarkable achievement all the same.

A.F.