As I've mentioned here many times before, the composer Malcolm Arnold played trumpet in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra as a schoolboy in Northampton. So the orchestra has always had a close connection with Arnold. Over the last 21 years, since the founding of the annual Malcolm Arnold Festival, we have often performed as part of the festival. But it's been three years between our last NSO contribution to the Malcolm Arnold Festival (reviewed here in October 2023) and our concert last Saturday at St Matthew's Church in Northampton as part of the 2026 Festival.
Our concert on Saturday featured a mix of pieces by Malcolm Arnold and Dmitri Shostakovich. The two composers first met in May 1957 during the Prague Spring Festival, where Arnold was attending as a guest of the Union of Czechoslovak Composers and representing the British Musicians' Union. They met a number of times over the years in their roles representing their respective national composer organisations, with their final meeting taking place in Prague in 1966. The Russian composer left a lasting impression on Malcolm Arnold, heavily influencing his later work.
We opened the concert with the 'Philharmonic Concerto' by Malcolm Arnold - a powerful work from 1976 with aggressive outer movements sandwiching a delicate slow movement that featured impressive solos by Hilary Glanville (viola), Richard Smith (violin) and John Whittall (trombone), and a thunderous end to the piece by Keith Crompton on timpani.
We then played the 'Symphony No 9' by Shostakovitch - a shorter, lighter piece than his other symphonies, reminiscent of the 'Classical Symphony' by Prokofiev. It requires less sheer power and volume from the orchestra than most Shostakovich symphonies but features fiendishly difficult rhythms, needing a lightness of touch and much concentration. Our performance went really well, with wonderful solos throughout the orchestra, including Graham Tear (flute), Sarah Mourant (oboe), Naomi Muller (clarinet: an amazing solo at the start of the second movement, becoming a lovely clarinet duet with Rob Reid), Georgina Neil (piccolo: including an impossibly long held note to finish the second movement) and Terry Mayo (trumpet). But the most incredible moment in the concert was the long unaccompanied bassoon solo spanning the end of the fourth and the start of the fifth movements, perfectly played by Sian Bunker. I was sitting directly behind Sian and realised halfway through her solo that I was actually holding my breath. I think all of us around her were frozen while we willed her on - nervous on Sian's behalf while she exuded a calm confidence and played beautifully.
The second half of the concert opened with the 'Rhapsody: The Sound Barrier' by Arnold, featuring his music from the 1952 David Lean film. We followed this with the 'Oboe Concerto' by Ruth Gipps - who was a contemporary of Malcolm Arnold at the Royal College of Music: a beautiful performance by Emmett Byrne. I enjoyed accompanying the concerto: it's a really nice piece that deserves to be better known. The final Malcolm Arnold piece in the programme was the rarely heard 'Little Suite No 3 (The Manx Suite)'.
We finished the concert with Shostakovich's glorious 'Festive Overture' - a stunning end to a great concert, carefully directed by our conductor John Gibbons. There was lovely playing throughout the orchestra but this concert really belonged to our brilliant woodwind section.
No comments:
Post a Comment