Maidstone Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Brian Wright
Violin: Irene Duval
Mote Hall, Maidstone, 24 October 2026
This concert – perfect programming for a very unpleasant wet, windy and cold night – presented four works all written within 50 years in the second half of the nineteenth century. And apart from Glinka’s rather novel Kamarinskya (1848) with its Russian folk theme and quirky orchestrations, every note was comfortingly familiar. It felt like an evening with dear old friends.
The centrepiece was a measured, moving performance of Bruch’s violin concerto No 1 (1867) by Irene Duval. All that G minor connotes a sumptuous slate blue for mildly synaesthetic me and Duval certainly evoked plenty of colour. It’s always a challenge to perform something so well known to many of its audience but Duval – intense and elegant – made it sound fresh and interesting. Her tone is deliciously rich and I’ve never heard the exquisite pianissimo melody in the adagio played quite so sweetly. The allegro energico was suitably spirited but Wright over milked the big rallentando moments.
The orchestra rose adeptly to the challenge of accompanying Duval with some attentive playing and excellent pizzicato from the strings. Wright is good at leaving space for his soloists. The Mote Hall acoustic is not great – after all it’s a sports hall not a concert hall – and it would all too easy for them to be drowned out but they never are.
Duval’s encore was a Gigue by JS Bach, the “cleanness” of which was a complete contrast to the silky Bruch. Her fingers danced over the strings like hammers in a delightful delivery of a lot of challengingly wide-ranging notes.
And so, after the interval to Dvorak’s best-known symphony: From the New World. Written in 1893 while the composer was in America fascinated by African American music but feeling homesick for Bohemia, the symphony is a unique blend of influences.
Highlights of this performance included splendid timp work (Keith Price) and a sensitive account (Kirsten Couldwell) of the loveliest cor anglais solo in the repertoire which never palls however many times you hear it. The string passage before the reprise of the cor anglais melody was beautifully played too. Andrew Laing is an unshowy leader but he certainly bonds the orchestra, especially the strings whose sound and coherence was excellent throughout this concert.
It wasn’t an evening without imperfections, however. Brian Wright took the allegro molto section of the symphony more slowly than many conductors which made it feel a bit sluggish although it allowed the detail to come through. And the horns – although Simon Philips played a fine solo in the opening Prince Igor overture – seemed to have lost some of their mojo by the time we got to the Dvorak.
Nonetheless there was much to admire and MSO must have worked some musical magic with the weather gods because I was able to get almost all the way home to London before the return of the torrential rain.
