Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert
24 May 2022
Our Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert last Saturday was dedicated to the memory of Luke Roskams, a long-time member of the orchestra who died suddenly and unexpectedly in April 2021. Luke was a violinist who played for many years with the Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera before moving to Northampton. Our concert featured Luke’s son Benjamin Roskams playing Max Bruch’s ‘Violin Concerto No. 1’ - a gorgeously romantic work that felt particularly poignant. Ben had previously played Bruch's 'Scottish Fantasy' with us (reviewed here in June 2015) and the ‘Romantic Fantasy’ by Arthur Benjamin (reviewed here in February 2019) and it was great to have the opportunity to hear him again. It was a stunning and very moving performance. We started the concert with another emotional piece, the orchestral rhapsody ‘A Shropshire Lad’ by George Butterworth - a young English composer who was killed by a sniper at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 at the age of 31. It’s a beautiful pastoral piece in the style of Vaughan-Williams, which we last played in a NSO concert in 2014 (reviewed here in October 2014). Our performance on Saturday featured some wonderfully delicate playing by the violas and clarinets. We started the second half of the concert with Samuel Barber’s haunting ‘Adagio for Strings’ - a piece that has become increasingly used in memorium. The concert finished with one of the works we played during lockdown in the NSO online rehearsals using Jamulus (open source low latency software), the ‘Symphony in D minor’ by Cesar Franck. This symphony was incredibly popular with audiences in the early twentieth century but then fell out of fashion and is now rarely performed. It’s a very likeable, tuneful piece and our performance featured impressive solos by Jo Bell on cor anglais, Rowena Bass on harp and Ian Jones on horn. It was a lovely concert.
Labels: Concerts, Music
'Lucky Stiff' by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty
19 May 2022
On Friday we were back at the tiny TADS Theatre in Toddington for the first time since October 2019 - not for a TADS performance but to see another very impressive amateur theatre group, St Andrew’s Players from Luton. They were performing the 1988 musical ‘Lucky Stiff’ with book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, based on the 1983 novel ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’ by Michael Butterworth. ‘Lucky Stiff’ is a very silly farce about the battle to inherit the fortune of a distant uncle, which involves taking the uncle’s corpse on holiday to Monte Carlo. It’s a nicely constructed plot, with slightly more to it than first appears. The songs have a narrative style which reminded me of Stephen Sondheim and were excellently performed by a cast full of strong singers, led by Musical Director Richard Cowling and accompanied by Martin Hart. The leads, Barry Hyde and Jo Yirrell, managed to make their ridiculous characters surprisingly sympathetic. Dee Lovelock’s production was a hoot. You can see the St Andrew’s Players trailer at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am2WFLpEe_w
Labels: Musicals, Theatre
Tom Robinson
13 May 2022
We really enjoyed Tom Robinson’s wonderful solo gig at the splendidly refurbished Drapers’ Hall in Coventry last year (reviewed here in November 2021). But last Friday it was even better to finally see his twice-postponed appearance at The Stables in Wavendon (our tickets having been carried forward twice from the originally planned date in 2020 because of lockdown). This was a concert with his full band - including long-time collaborators Adam Philips and Lee Forsyth Griffiths - and it was great to see them back together. Having followed Tom Robinson for almost 30 years, it always surprises me how many people in the audience say they have never seen him before (about a third of this sold-out crowd). It is great that he is still picking up new fans at this late stage of his career. And Tom was in good voice, showcasing updated verses for several of his classic songs to rage against the ‘beyond parody’ behaviour of current politicians.
Labels: Concerts, Music
'Don Quixote' directed by Orson Welles
6 May 2022
This week’s ‘The Signal From David Katznelson’ newsletter describes how Katznelson has been meaning for many years to read ‘Don Quixote’ by Miguel de Cervantes and has now finally done so. His experience of tackling this genius “first modern novel” sounds remarkably similar to my own (described at length in my review here in January 2012): it was a bit of struggle but the transition into meta-fiction in the second part of the story (when the knight and his squire encounter people who have read the earlier volume and are familiar with their history) is fascinating. David Katznelson also makes the point I did in my review of James Fenton’s stage adaptation of ‘Don Quixote’ (reviewed here in January 2019) that the laughs at the expense of what is effectively mental illness feel a bit uncomfortable at times. Best of all The Signal provides a link to Orson Welles’ unfinished film of ‘Don Quixote’ - which Welles started in 1955 and was working on intermittently until his death in 1985. It’s a bizarre curio, well worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RZaalXvhIk Labels: Books, Film
