Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

17 December 2025

The Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Christmas Cracker’ concert - a Sunday-afternoon, family-friendly performance - always features a narrated piece. This year we told two stories to our packed audience at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton. In the first half of the concert our compere William Thallon narrated 'Paddington Bear's First Concert' – in which Herbert Chappell creates an extensive theme and variations from his signature tune for the old BBC TV 'Paddington'. And after the interval William told the story of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ in a version by Lawrence Killian, with words by Margaret Killian. This year’s concert was a particularly Christmassy Christmas Cracker - with no film music and almost every piece featuring familiar Christmas carol tunes. It was billed as a British Christmas, focussing on works by UK composers, including ‘A Christmas Overture’ by Nigel Hess and Malcolm Arnold’s arrangement of ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ - but still finding room for our signature ‘Sleigh Ride’ by Leroy Anderson. It was a very slick, enjoyable concert, brilliantly held together by conductor John Gibbons and featuring excellent solos across many sections of the orchestra but I will particularly remember Helen Taylor’s beautiful flutter-tongue piccolo solo evoking Paddington’s Darkest Peru.