Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

19 July 2024

The Northampton Symphony Orchestra Friends Concert is always a lovely end-of-season party. Last Sunday the NSO gave Callie Rich, Callie Scully, Ian Jones and me the opportunity to reprise our performance of the 'Konzertstück for four Horns' by Heinrich Hübler which we first played with the orchestra in our concert in Grantham last year (reviewed here in November 2023). It’s a fun piece and we really enjoyed ourselves. The concert also featured a brilliant young flute soloist from Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts trust playing the first movement of the ‘Flute Concerto’ by Carl Nielsen - a fiendishly difficult piece beautifully performed, which also included impressive solos by Kate Bradshaw on bass trombone and Christine Kelk on clarinet. We opened the concert with ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ Overture by Otto Nicolai and also played the Intermezzo from 'Fennimore And Gerda' by Frederick Delius which featured lovely solos from Helen Taylor (flute) and Harriet Brown (oboe). We finished with Hamish MacCunn’s ‘The Land of the Mountain and the Flood’ concert overture. It was a very enjoyable concert and a lovely way to say thank you to the Friends of the Orchestra at the end of our 2023-24 season.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

2 July 2024

For a horn player, the chance to play one of the symphonies of Anton Bruckner is a rare treat. During my time as a member of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra I’ve now been lucky enough to play the first horn part in three Bruckner symphonies: No 6 (reviewed here in March 2015), No 4 (reviewed here in February 2020) and No 7 which we performed at St Matthew's Church in Northampton last Saturday. Bruckner’s 7th symphony requires at least 8 horn players rather than the usual 4: for our performance there were 10 of us, including 3 former NSO members and 2 friends from Milton Keynes Sinfonia. Four of my colleagues played the Wagner tubas which feature in the wondrous slow movement and the dramatic finale. Their beautiful second movement quartet was particularly splendid, with Ian Jones’ melody gently soaring above the gorgeous harmonies. Bruckner 7 is a big work, comprising more than an hour of abstract orchestral music with no story to guide the listener through it. But it’s not difficult to listen to if you immerse yourself in it. As with all Bruckner’s symphonies there is beauty, glory and brilliance, tempered by humility and moments of unexpected gentleness. NSO conductor John Gibbons cleverly shaped our performance, resisting the temptation to over-romanticise by pulling the tempos about (as many recordings of the symphony do) and maintaining a steady pulsing momentum that let the music’s emotions reveal themselves. John managed to draw a stunning performance of this mammoth, challenging piece from the orchestra, with the endings of each of the four movements creating magical moments of breath-holding silence. The NSO as a whole seemed to rise to the challenge - even those players who are not such Bruckner fans - but, as I said after both of my previous experiences of playing Bruckner symphonies with NSO, mostly it was about the horns!

The NSO horn section for Bruckner Symphony No 7

 

The concert opened with Alexander Borodin’s ‘Prince Igor Overture’ which features some of the same tunes as the better-known ‘Polovtsian Dances’ and included a brilliant clarinet solo by Naomi Muller and a lovely horn solo by Ian Jones.

We also played Amy Beach’s ‘Piano Concerto’ with the amazing young pianist Julian Chan. The concerto, which was premiered in 1900 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra with the composer as the soloist, was the first piano concerto written by an American woman. It’s a big, dramatic, romantic piece in four movements that deserves to be much better-known. Julian Chan, who joined us last year to play Saint-Saens’ ‘Piano Concerto No 5’ (reviewed here in February 2023) learned the Amy Beach concerto specifically for our concert but gave the impression it had been in his repertoire for years. The lush sprawling piano chords of the lengthy first movement, the gentle clockwork perpetuum mobile piano notes throughout the second movement and the Chopinesque playfulness of the fourth movement were all brilliantly executed. It’s a lovely concerto - and it was a wonderful concert to mark the end of Emily Groom’s tenure as the orchestra’s leader.

Emily joined NSO in 2021, leading the orchestra in our first concert following the Covid-19 lockdowns in October 2021. Her many contributions to our concerts have included beautiful violin solos in 'Symphony No 9' by Ralph Vaughan Williams (reviewed here in October 2022), Rimsky Korsakov’s ‘Scheherazade’ (reviewed here in February 2023) and Beethoven’s ‘Romance for violin and orchestra No. 2 in F major’ (reviewed here in July 2023). Many thanks Emily and all best wishes for the future.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

12 May 2024

When we last played the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra, accompanying Lucy Parham in 2007, I wrote here (in November 2007) that the piece always reminds me how nervous I was playing the exposed horn solos in the first and second movements as a teenager with the Didsbury Symphony Orchestra in 1983, accompanying Peter Donohoe, and how relieved I was this time to be leaving those solos to the NSO Principal Horn David Lack. Now that Dave is sadly no longer with us, last Saturday it was my turn again, for the first time since 1983. Our NSO concert, in. St Matthews Church in Northampton, featured the brilliant young Russian soloist, Victor Maslov. There is a wonderful video on YouTube of Victor playing the Grieg Piano Concerto 15 years ago at the age of 11: https://youtu.be/ITJZEN2B87Y?si=5ZVVXUsn_tNwSV8t The 2024 version was even more spectacular: it was a genuinely thrilling performance by one of the most exciting soloists we have accompanied in recent years. Victor seemed to be playing this most famous of concertos neither in a lush romantic style nor in a disciplined classical approach, instead managing to make it feel much more contemporary - a fascinatingly inquisitive modern take on a work that can feel over familiar - but without losing any of the passion. In contrast to my teenage self, this time I found the short horn solos really enjoyable and I was pleased with how they went. But mine was a minor contribution to an incredible performance that will live long in the memory of everyone who was there. Victor Maslov's encore, a short Prelude by Scriabin, was delicate and mesmerising. It was a challenge for the NSO to follow this in the second half of the concert but Brahms' 'Symphony No 4' is a work that deserves to stand alongside the Grieg concerto. It's a lovely piece that demonstrates how Brahms continued and developed Beethoven's symphonic style - built on meticulous syncopated rhythms, driving chord progressions and controlled power. Brahms 4 is one of my favourite symphonies. This was the first time I had played it for more than 25 years but I was surprised how well I still knew the horn parts. It's a lovely symphony, incredibly satisfying to play, in which every note feels carefully crafted. NSO conductor John Gibbons shaped a beautifully controlled performance which was incredibly moving - with Graham Tear's gorgeously measured flute solo in the last movement exemplifying this. We opened the concert with the 'Froissart Overture' by Edward Elgar and also played Laura Rossi's witty musical journey through Italy, 'Jailhouse Graffiti' which was commissioned by John Gibbons to celebrate an April Fools prank he and Laura played on the Ealing Symphony Orchestra in 2005.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

5 March 2024

Last Saturday I played in a Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert which featured a rare performance of the First Symphony by Sir Arnold Bax. The early 20th century English composer was a committed Hibernophile, passionate about Ireland, Irish culture and the Gaelic language. He wrote poetry in Gaelic and named his children Dermot and Maeve. Bax was deeply affected by the 1916 Easter Rising and the execution of Irish rebel leaders by the British Army, but felt unable to speak out as he was then Master of the King's Music. His 'Symphony No 1', completed in 1922, while not publicly connected to the events in Ireland, reflects his anger and grief. As a programmatic work about the armed suppression of protest and rebellion it made for a fascinating comparison with our performance last year of Shostakovich's 'Symphony No 11:The Year 1905' (reviewed here in June 2023) and the 'Peterloo Overture' by Malcolm Arnold (reviewed here in October 2019). Bax's First Symphony is scored for a massive orchestra, including hecklephone (bass oboe), sarrusophone (or contrabassoon), bass flute and two harps. It's a brutal, angry piece, punctuated by some surprising moments of gentle beauty. It took me some weeks of practice to begin to appreciate the music but it really grew on me and I thought we gave a impressively coherent and moving performance of the symphony. Our concert also featured the 'Violin Concerto No 2' by Prokofiev - a stunning performance by Joo Yeo Sir. Both Bax and Prokofiev went out of copyright on 1 January 2024 so I suspect there will be more performances of works by both composers this year. We opened the concert with Bernstein's 'Symphonic Dances from West Side Story' - last performed by the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in 2008 (reviewed here in March 2008). 'West Side Story' is a challenge for any orchestra - both because of its complex syncopated jazz and Latin rhythms, and because it is so well known. As we settled our nerves, took a deep breath and launched into the opening bars, conductor John Gibbons immediately halted the performance and dashed off stage, having forgotten to bring with him the police whistle whose shrill blast halts the Jets and Sharks at the end of the Prologue. Amused and relaxed by this intrusion, the orchestra started again and gave an exciting and slick account of Bernstein's score - featuring a brilliant percussion section, amazing work by Terry Mayo on trumpet and a beautifully controlled flute cadenza by Graham Tear, providing a haunting moment of stillness after the mayhem. It was a wonderful concert, enthusiastically received by a sold out audience at Christchurch, Northampton.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

13 December 2023

The Northampton Symphony Orchestra's Christmas Cracker concert always attracts an enthusiastic family audience, but this was the first year I can remember us selling out the Spinney Theatre at Northampton School for Girls. It was very exciting to take to the stage on Sunday afternoon to see more than 500 faces looking back at us. This was a triumph for the NSO Committee and orchestra members who delivered a very effective marketing campaign - and for our conductor John Gibbons who planned and delivered an extremely family-friendly programme. We played a mixture of traditional seasonal tunes (including Morton Gould's innovative arrangement of 'Jingle Bells' and Leroy Anderson's 'Sleigh Ride'), Christmas carols, film music (from 'Frozen' and 'Mary Poppins') and two narrated pieces featuring our compere David Birch. 'Sugar Plum on the Run' by Lior Rosner tells the story of what happened to the Sugar Plum Fairy after the events of 'The Nutcracker' - and provides an excuse for a miscellany of variations on Tchaikovsky's 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy'. We sandwiched Rosner's piece between movements from the actual 'Nutcracker Suite'. But our younger audience members seemed most excited by our performance of 'The Gruffalo' - Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's tale set to music by Philip McKenzie. Like Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf' this narrated piece features specific instruments of the orchestra as each of the main characters, with the piccolo (Graham Tear) as the mouse, E flat clarinet (Naomi Muller) as the fox, cor anglais (Harriet Brown) as the snake, French horn (Ian Jones) as the owl and the contra bassoon (Frank Jordan) as the Gruffalo. Each year the orchestra's transformation during the interval into a sea of santa hats, reindeer antlers and fancy dress gets sillier and sillier - and I think we looked particularly splendid on Sunday. But silliness does not come without risk: I had wrapped a long piece of tinsel around my French horn and just as we were approaching the climax of 'Frozen' I removed my third valve slide to empty it out in order to be ready for the big tune and managed to get a tiny strand of tinsel stuck in the exposed pipe, which prevented me from replacing the slide. As panic began to set in, I managed to play my next entry without using the third valve and then rapidly removed all tinsel and got the slide to fit back in without missing a note. Fortunately I  don't think anyone noticed my near disaster - but I will be steering clear of all tinsel in next year's Christmas Cracker concert!

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

21 November 2023

In 2019 Northampton Symphony Orchestra performed at Clifton Cathedral in Bristol (reviewed here in November 2019) - our first trip away from Northamptonshire since I joined the orchestra in 2000. This had been intended as the first in a series of annual weekends away for the orchestra but our plans were curtailed by the pandemic. Last weekend NSO was finally on tour again, spending two days in Grantham where we performed a concert at the Church of Saint John the Evangelist in Spitalgate. The concert was part of a programme of fundraising to support more community activities at the recently reopened church, which has just secured National Lottery funding to launch a Community Fridge - a space that brings people together to share food, meet up, learn new skills and prevent fresh food from going to waste. Our host was the church's Director of Music, the soprano Helen Winter, who helped to organise the concert, brought her choir, the St John's Winter Singers (plus guests from other local choirs) to perform with us, and sang two amazing solos with the orchestra herself. We travelled to Grantham on Saturday morning, rehearsed in the church in the afternoon and had a meal together on Saturday evening, ahead of the concert on Sunday afternoon. With some people unable to join us for the weekend, it was a smaller orchestra than normal and our Music Director, John Gibbons, did a great job of arranging many of the pieces for the available forces. The concert included music by Delius, Vaughan Williams, Wagner, Fauré, Mozart and Mascagni. Orchestra member Hilary Glanville gave a stunning performance of the 'Pastoral Fantasia for Viola and String Orchestra' by Northampton's William Alwyn - a beautiful, haunting piece with echoes of Delius and Vaughan Williams. But the highlight of the concert (for me at least!) was the 'Konzertstück for four Horns' by Heinrich Hübler which featured the NSO horn section - Callie Rich, Callie Scully, Ian Jones and me. Hübler was a horn player who performed in the premiere of Schumann's 'Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra' and was inspired to compose a similar piece. Hübler's Konzertstück is slightly easier to play than the Schumann and more evenly shares the melodic lines amongst all four solo horns. We were very pleased with our first concerto performance together and it seemed to go down well with the enthusiastic audience at St John's. We are looking forward to playing the Hübler concerto again at the NSO Friends concert in July 2024. Our Grantham concert was a lovely occasion, featuring a wide variety of musical styles and some beautiful, delicate playing by the orchestra, including wonderful woodwind solos by Graham Tear, Sarah Mourant and Christine Kelk. Although we were a little under-rehearsed I think this just made us concentrate more carefully in the concert which was one of our best performances for a long time. We had a really enjoyable weekend in Grantham: it was nice to spend time together as an orchestra, with plenty of great conversation over food. Many thanks to Helen Winter, John Gibbons and Callie Rich for organising everything.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

26 October 2023

The last time the Northampton Symphony Orchestra played Sibelius' 'Symphony No. 1', in 2008, I was impressed by the assured opening clarinet solo by Naomi Muller (reviewed here in April 2008). Performing the symphony again, in the recent NSO concert at St Matthews Church in Northampton on 14 October, Naomi’s reprise of her unaccompanied solo was even more stunning. And rediscovering the intricacies of the symphony after 15 years reminded me how much I like the music of Sibelius. The first symphony marked his move away from programmatic music that tells a particular story and brilliantly demonstrates the captivating power of ‘absolute’ or abstract music - creating a beautiful, powerful and emotional sound world that is uniquely Sibelius. Our NSO concert opened with the ‘Polonaise from Eugene Onegin’ by Tchaikovsky and featured the original version of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Variations on a Rococo Theme’ with the wonderful ‘cello soloist Florian Arnicans. We also played two works by Malcolm Arnold - his orchestral arrangement of the ‘Tango in D’ by Isaac Albeniz and his ballet music for the one-act dance-drama ‘Rinaldo and Armida’. I particularly enjoyed getting to know this rarely performed dramatic and tuneful work.