Maidstone Symphony Orchestra

Brian Wright (Conductor)

Benjamin Baker (Violin)

Saturday 02 December 2023, Mote Hall, Maidstone

An all English programme with three works likely to be unfamiliar to most of the audience is a brave undertaking  but on the whole Brian Wright and the MSO carried it off with their usual aplomb.

At the heart of the evening was Lark Ascending, regularly voted by the British public its favourite piece of classical music. Violinist Baker presented Ralph Vaughan Williams’s evocative masterpiece as a substantial post-interval encore and he played it – his hands small and his fingers fascinatingly neat – with immaculate musical control. Yes, he, and we, really did soar and hover with the eponymous bird.

Baker’s pre-interval work was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s G minor violin concerto – an unusual key for a violin concerto – and it was a warmly business-like performance starting with the grandiloquence of the opening movement with its flamboyant melodies. I admired the gentle lyricism in the andante, It’s very hard to achieve but Baker gave us a passionate song-like quality carefully supported by Wright delivering the instrumental detail in the muted accompaniment. The legato violin over the short wind notes in third movement was another rather lovely moment.

The concert had begun with Holst’s ballet music for The Perfect Fool and ended with Elgar’s Falstaff so theatrical reference was, in effect, a theme.

The Holst piece, which came  soon after The Planets, enjoys similar quirky orchestratation so there was plenty of opportunity for MSO players so show just how good they are from the trombone opening, to the bassoons grunting at the very bottom of their register. In the second dance, The Spirits of Water, the harp and flute moment was attractively balanced.

Elgar’s Falstaff is a musical exploration of the character of Shakespeare’s “Fat Jack” as he appears in the two Henry IV plays and Henry V in which he dies off stage. It’s a colourful episodic piece which required the return of full forces, including five percussionists. Those of us who know the plays well – from the bawdy comedy, to the cruel trickery and ultimately to the devastating rejection – can appreciate Elgar’s imaginative contrasts including whispering strings and wind interjection. It was all pretty accurately played here, with some delightful bassoon work although it’s a very challenging piece – Elgar is never straightforward –  and there was a feeling in places that the strings were working at the far edge of their ability. Nonetheless it was quite what an achievement for a community orchestra – another feather in MSO’s cap.

Photographs by Kaupo Kikkas

Hastings Philharmonic (HPO) Singers
Saturday 25 th November at Christ Church St Leonards-on-Sea
Rameau Aquilon et Orithie
Rameau Quam dilecta tabernacula
Gilles Messe des morts
Ensemble OrQuesta Baroque
Music Director Marcio da Silva
Continuo Predrag Gosta

Marcio da Silva is something of a musical polymath. Among a whole host of activities, he is conductor of the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra, Choir and Singers; he has set up his own ensemble, OrQuesta Baroque to perform music from the baroque repertoire in which he directs as well as playing the recorder; he has a fine baritone voice; and he also is an enterprising impresario who brings to the Hastings and St Leonards music scene a wide range of high quality, professional and good amateur performances, both of large scale choral and orchestral works as well as smaller ensemble and soloist recitals. He is no one-man-band, however, and he would be the first to admit that he would achieve little without the focus and musical intelligence of the instrumentalists and
singers with whom he works.

Good as it is to resurrect forgotten works, rigorously authentic performances sometimes suggest that it might have been best to leave such works in obscurity. On the other hand, this concert of unfamiliar French vocal music from the late 17 th and early 18 th centuries by Rameau and Gilles proved quite the opposite: three pieces of great poignancy and beauty performed with exquisite tenderness, sensitivity, drama and utter musicality, enhanced by the fine acoustic and intimate candle-lit atmosphere of Blomfield’s Gothic-revival church of Christ Church St Leonard’s.

In Rameau’s solo cantata ‘Aquilon and Orthie’, the north wind woos his lover. There was a wonderful lyricism to Marcio’s singing, which fully brought out the drama of the text, while the recorder and violin soloists and the continuo of the distinguished keyboard player, Predrag Gosta, provided brilliant but gentle support and contrast to the strong vocal line, emphasising both the dance like qualities and rustic melancholy of the music. The interweaving and imitation of the vocal and instrumental parts had a magical effect and the whole ensemble was perfectly balanced in a performance which was both intense but relaxed. I particularly enjoyed the graceful and implied shifting harmonies of the recitatives, which are unlike those of other composers.

The impressive instrumental playing continued in Rameau’s setting of Psalm 84. ‘Quam dilecta tabernacula’, with its sublime opening of strings and recorder, and the strings provided a firm but controlled accompaniment and counterpoint to the vocal lines. The soprano soloist had a bell-like purity of tone and, as elsewhere, the vocal line was not embellished with too many ornamentations which, in some period performances, can be excessive for a modern audience. The chorus provided a rich, intense but controlled sound which balanced the soloists well; entries were all precise, well-tuned and often dramatically joyful, with clearly articulated and pointed imitative phrases. Despite
the fullness of the writing, there was considerable variety to the texture of the choral singing. The light, evangelist-tone of the tenor soloist was exactly right, with a superb high register: his top notes floated out with consummate ease. This expressive lyricism was reflected by all four soloists who sang with perfect ensemble, balancing their volume and vocal quality to recreate Rameau’s wonderfully expressive harmonies and vocal lines. Crisp double-dotting gave the choral sections a light, dance-like quality while the bass solo with recorder again emphasised the harmonic intensity of the writing.

The quality of performance by soloists, instrumentalists and choir perhaps reached its peak in the performance of the Messe des Morts by Jean Gilles, a name new to me: what, one wonders, would he have produced had he not died so young aged 37 in 1705? The work has a remarkable variety of emotional content, from the solemn funeral march at the start to joyful, dance-like celebrations of the life hereafter, with sections of contemplative introspection, but at no point is there a sense of gloom: death is seen as either inevitable, a welcome release form the tribulations of worldly life or the door to eternal joy. This diverse approach to the subject matter was reflected superbly
throughout the performance, with the changing colour produced by different vocal, choral and instrumental combinations, all of which emphasized both the lyrical vocal lines and the often poignant harmonies. The variety of emotion was nowhere more apparent than in the solo performances, all well-balanced with measured instrumental accompaniment: it was good to hear soloists who were so responsive to each other, producing perfect ensemble singing. The choral elements were dramatic, exhilarating and, in the final chorus, heart-wrenchingly moving in its emotional content: throughout, the choir sang with great precision in tuning and in its entries, some of them quite exposed, and coped well with the harmonic changes, producing considerable variety
in tonal colour. There was never a hint of straining for top notes, and the more forceful passages were simply exciting, with some almost theatrical interjections. This was a fine, totally professional performance of an unjustly neglected work which brought out its deep emotional power and sheer beauty.

There were absolutely no weak links among those involved in this impressive concert, and Marcio is to be congratulated on balancing so well soloists, choir and instrumentalists, while taking a leading role as performer himself to produce a highly memorable evening. I will certainly now be listening to more early Rameau and Gilles.

Philharmonia    Royal Festival Hall    Paavo Jarvi    James Ehnes   26 November 2023

However many times you’ve heard it and however familiar it is, there are few more atmospheric pieces than Prelude à l’après-midi d’un faune. In this performance Jarvi really ensured that it resonated with every detail of Debussy’s sunny, evocative score lovingly lingered over – especially the harp chords and then the tiny, tinkling bells in the final bars. And I really liked the way he allowed the sound to die away, arms raised at the end and – for once – the audience respected that and really listened.

James Ehnes is an admirably unshowy performer but, my goodness, he finds plenty of passion and bravura in the music. Dressed in “lounge suit” with tie (the orchestra was in full evening dress at 3pm) he looked more like a very business-like cabinet minister than a soloist. The Tchaikovsky violin concerto can seem like a populist pot boiler but Ehnes made it sound daisy-fresh most notably in his immaculate first movement cadenza and the delightful duet with the orchestra which ends it. His muted Canzonetta was moving and I enjoyed the excellent balance with the wind solos: flute, clarinet and bassoon. The segue into the finale was elegant and his staccato, vivacissimo, heel-of-the-bow rhythms were a masterclass in violin technique.

His encore was new to me, and I suspect to most of the audience. Eugène Ysaÿe’s sonata number 3 in D minor is a one movement piece. It’s plaintive with lots of double stopping and glissandi along with some wonderfully virtuosic cross string work. It was a well chosen contrast and the tumultuous applause Ehnes received was richly deserved.

And so to Prokofiev’s sixth symphony which dates from 1947, only six years before the composer’s death. It was, almost inevitably, banned in Soviet Russia: it was too austere and truthful for the Stalinist regime. At this concert it required a fair bit of interval stage management to accommodate an additional desk in each of the four string sections, five percussionists and full brass as well as piano. The symphony is structured as a triptych with a poignant, almost filmic largo at its heart.  Jarvi, always a very measured conductor who really holds general pauses for dramatic effect, brought out all the necessary sonority in, for example the violin solo in the first movement and the sensitively played brass solos in the second. And the insouciant (subversive?) trombone work against the strings in the third vivace movement was delightful.