Cultural Dessert

Last Sunday’s Northampton Symphony Orchestra ‘Christmas Cracker’ concert marked the end of an era, with our conductor of more than seven years, Graham Tear, wielding the baton for the final time. It was an emotional occasion in the enormous atrium of Unity College, Northampton, spoiled only by the lack of heating as the result of a flood at the college earlier in the week. While it was quite cold, the sight, on Sunday afternoon, of a packed audience in hats, coats and gloves under the vast glass ceiling of atrium as the sun sank slowly away, somehow seemed even more Christmassy – creating an image of massed carol singers assembled in a town square. The ‘Christmas Cracker’ concert has become a valued Northampton tradition and all the usual elements were present: classical music with a Christmas theme (including the ‘Sleigh Ride’ by Delius), carols for the audience to sing, a narrated work (Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’) and an orchestra dominated by Santa hats and tinsel. The climax, as always, was provided by trumpeter Nick Bunker’s entrance at the beginning of the second half of the concert to play the ‘Sleigh Ride’ by Leroy Anderson: this year, with several younger members of the audience still traumatised by the cries of the eaten-alive duck in the wolf’s stomach at the end of ‘Peter and the Wolf’, Nick appeared in a 6-foot Daffy Duck costume, with one arm in a sling! A lovely afternoon, ending with an encore of Ronan Hardiman’s ‘Lord of the Dance’, providing a great send-off for Graham Tear.