NMPAT Sinfonietta concert
23 January 2020
I
last played in one of Trevor Dyson’s charity orchestral concerts in
Northampton two years ago when we performed the Tchaikovsky Violin
Concerto and Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No 3 (Eroica)’ (reviewed
here in February 2017). On Saturday I was delighted to be asked again
to join the NMPAT Sinfonietta – a scratch orchestra made up mostly
of instrumental music teachers from Northamptonshire Music and
Performing Arts Trust and conducted by Trevor – to raise funds for
the Spinal Injuries Association. Like last time, the afternoon
rehearsal was fairly worrying as we struggled to pull together a
substantial and challenging programme in a very limited time. But
this resulted in extreme levels of concentration in the evening
performance which went really well and was great fun. We opened with
the ‘Roman Carnival Overture’ by Berlioz – a thrilling piece
that is rarely played as fast as should be in my opinion, but we
managed to maintain an impressive pace! We followed this with ‘Peter
and the Wolf’ by Prokofiev, narrated by Alan Bell, which featured
stunning performances by the four woodwind soloists: Graham Tear on
flute, Peter Dunkley on clarinet, Frank Jordan on bassoon and Iona
Walker on oboe (who also played the lovely cor anglais solo in the
Roman Carnival overture beautifully). The concert closed with the
epic ‘Symphony No 6 (Pathétique)’ by Tchaikovsky. This was an
ambitious undertaking on a single rehearsal but I think our
performance was pretty impressive (if a little unrestrained in the
faster, louder sections!). Usually when you play the Pathétique
Symphony the triumphant march of the third movement fools anyone who
hasn’t heard the piece before into thinking it has finished, and
it’s not uncommon to get applause at this false ending, before the
sting-in-the-tail of the angst-laden final slow movement. On Saturday
our breathtaking romp through the third movement was greeted by a
stunned silence punctuated simply by someone on the front row of the
audience spontaneously and gloriously shouting ‘wow!’.
Thankfully, the devastating ending of the final movement also
elicited an enthusiastic reaction: it was an exciting and
entertaining concert which managed to raise a substantial amount of
money for the SIA.
posted by Robin Simpson @ 11:33 am
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