Cultural Dessert

Saturday was Graham Tear’s penultimate appearance as conductor of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra. After seven years on the podium Graham is stepping down, to be replaced in the New Year by Alexander Walker. Our programme on Saturday was an ambitious one but the orchestra rose to the occasion. Elgar’s Second Symphony is a long and complex piece: when we started to rehearse in September, I wasn’t convinced we were going to get to grips with it. I think we really benefited from the different perspectives of the four conductors who worked with us on the symphony as their audition piece. By the time we reached the concert it felt like the orchestra understood the work well and I think we gave a good account of it. I enjoyed Walton’s ‘Johannesburg Festival Overture’ which opened the concert, at St Matthew’s Church in Northampton, and I was pleased to be able to enjoy Lucy Parham’s impressive performance of Ravel’s ‘Piano Concerto in G’ from the audience – it’s a fiendishly difficult piece but the slow movement, in particular, is beautiful.