Maidstone Symphony Orchestra
Mote, Hall Maidstone
Conductor: Brian Wright
Violinist: Mayumi Kangawa
Ralph Vaughan Williams’s tried and tested overture to The Wasps made a cheerful opener in this high-octane concert. The muted string “buzzing” at the beginning was admirably incisive and Brian Wright ensured that we heard plenty of melody especially from horn and flute.
Much less familiar, and arguably more challenging for the audience, was William Walton’s technically demanding 1939 violin concerto which, I have to confess, has never been a work I warm to. It was, however, charismatically played here by diminutive, smiling and immensely talented Mayumi Kangawa who gets a fabulous tone from the “Wilhelmj” Stadivarius instrument which she has on loan from Nippon Music Foundation. It shines like a well polished conker and has a voice like a timeless, show-stopping diva.
I liked the brisk crispness Kangawa brought to the second movement and her sumptuous double stopping in the vivace. She has an engaging way of leaning, lovingly into the high notes. And her bowing is elegantly sinuous.
For her encore she played an arrangement by Jascha Heifitz (for whom the preceding concerto was written) of the spiritual Deep River – very legato, soulfully beautiful and a complete contrast.
I never hear Berlioz’s programmatic Symphonie Fantastique (1830) without reflecting incredulously that it came just six years after Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and two years after Schubert’s death. The adjective “ground breaking” is an absurdly belittling understatement. It is, moreover, full of challenges which Wright and MSO rose to with aplomb. For example we got tender attention to dynamics along with some fine trumpet and timp work in the opening movement and the harp in the second movement ball “scene” was delightful. Wright played up the drama and all that eerie mystery in the third movement with some beautiful playing from the four bassoons. The timp pasage (two sets) is always, as here, an arresting development. Then, after a deliciously menacing account of March to the Scaffold, MSO really went to town with the exciting piccolo screaming over lower wind in the finale and the drama of the tubular bells.
This concert felt like a musical roller-coaster. The Berlioz is gruelling to play (and conduct) but once again, they pulled it off in spades. Congratulations to them all.
