Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert
17 December 2021
Because of the intervention of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been two years since the last Northampton Symphony Orchestra Christmas Cracker concert - which always feels to me like the official start of Christmas. All last week, amid scary news about the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, I was convinced that this year’s concert was going to be cancelled at the last minute. So it was wonderful to find myself back on the stage of the Spinney Theatre in Northampton on Sunday afternoon in front of a sold-out audience (albeit with restricted numbers to allow for social distancing). The audience, and most of the orchestra, had to wear face masks throughout, and there were no mince pies, mulled wine or carol singing. Nevertheless it felt fantastic to be back playing the usual mix of Christmas tunes and film music after such a long break. Over the years, the traditional smattering of Santa hats and reindeer antlers amongst the orchestra has evolved into an increasingly competitive fancy dress competition. Those of us in the horn section prepared for our performance of Klaus Badelt’s music from ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ with matching pirate hats, some elaborate pirate outfits, cutlasses and one 6-foot parrot costume! The centrepiece of the Christmas Cracker concert is always a narrated piece: this year we returned to ‘The Snowman’ by Howard Blake, with excellent storytelling by our compere Alan Bell and a brilliant solo rendition of ‘Walking in the Air’ by young soprano Elizabeth Aston. Another highlight for me was the stunning flute solo by Graham Tear in the final bars of ‘Han Solo and the Princess’ by John Williams (from ‘The Empire Strikes Back’). We finished the afternoon, of course, with an encore performance of Leroy Anderson’s ‘Sleigh Ride’ - and, at least in that moment, normality was restored. It was a lovely concert: a happy and moving experience.
posted by Robin Simpson @ 3:01 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home