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Todmorden Today, UK
Nov 19 2011
Music of rivers - and remembrance
Published on Saturday 19 November 2011 19:24
RIVERS and remembrance framed Saturday's packed Todmorden Orchestra
concert at Todmorden Town Hall.
Smetana's Ma Vlast is a patriotic, poetic and testing celebration of
the river that is to Prague what the Thames is to London. The music
rises in mellifluously swirling, intricate eddies, writes Rob Barnett.
It's an unforgiving piece with which to warm up a concert and
conductor Nicholas Concannon Hodges took it quickly. In loud sections
details became opaque which in part is down to the reverberant
acoustic.
Armenian composer Arutiunian's testing trumpet concerto was played by
Brian McGinley. Some of the climactic orchestral writing in the first
movement has tremendous symphonic weight. At one point McGinley's
invincible brilliance had to compete with it to be heard over the
Shostakovich-style heroics.
After this came Ballet suite 4 by Arutiunian's teacher Shostakovich.
This three movement light-hearted suite is drawn from the ballets and
film scores. The first of these is The Limpid Stream - rivers again.
The middle movement starts with Tchaikovskian balletic delicacy and
rises to a rousingly big noise.
After the interval the 57-strong orchestra turned to a composer they
have championed before - in June 2009 they gave an excellent reading
of Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony. A London Symphony was dedicated
to the composer George Butterworth killed by a sniper on the Western
Front in 1916.
It opens with the merest murmur and rises to a thunderous whirlwind.
By no means picture-postcard stuff the music is often sinister,
murderous and infernal.
The 12-strong brass were exemplary in phalanx as well as individually
and by section just as the Todmorden catchment has come to expect. The
magically hushed backdrop for the deeply moving cor anglais in the
second movement and the brief duo between the leader and harpist at
the end of the first were sensitively done.
It's a work shot through with tragic march episodes: bloodied but
unbowed. The extended silence after the epilogue before the first
burst of applause was eloquent.
If the quiet moments were laced with distant bells from St Mary's it
remains an indelibly memorable evening especially for a remarkably
fine performance of the Vaughan Williams.
http://www.todmordennews.co.uk/lifestyle/lifestyle-leisure-and-entertainment/music_of_rivers_and_remembrance_1_3986959
From: A. Papazian
Nov 19 2011
Music of rivers - and remembrance
Published on Saturday 19 November 2011 19:24
RIVERS and remembrance framed Saturday's packed Todmorden Orchestra
concert at Todmorden Town Hall.
Smetana's Ma Vlast is a patriotic, poetic and testing celebration of
the river that is to Prague what the Thames is to London. The music
rises in mellifluously swirling, intricate eddies, writes Rob Barnett.
It's an unforgiving piece with which to warm up a concert and
conductor Nicholas Concannon Hodges took it quickly. In loud sections
details became opaque which in part is down to the reverberant
acoustic.
Armenian composer Arutiunian's testing trumpet concerto was played by
Brian McGinley. Some of the climactic orchestral writing in the first
movement has tremendous symphonic weight. At one point McGinley's
invincible brilliance had to compete with it to be heard over the
Shostakovich-style heroics.
After this came Ballet suite 4 by Arutiunian's teacher Shostakovich.
This three movement light-hearted suite is drawn from the ballets and
film scores. The first of these is The Limpid Stream - rivers again.
The middle movement starts with Tchaikovskian balletic delicacy and
rises to a rousingly big noise.
After the interval the 57-strong orchestra turned to a composer they
have championed before - in June 2009 they gave an excellent reading
of Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony. A London Symphony was dedicated
to the composer George Butterworth killed by a sniper on the Western
Front in 1916.
It opens with the merest murmur and rises to a thunderous whirlwind.
By no means picture-postcard stuff the music is often sinister,
murderous and infernal.
The 12-strong brass were exemplary in phalanx as well as individually
and by section just as the Todmorden catchment has come to expect. The
magically hushed backdrop for the deeply moving cor anglais in the
second movement and the brief duo between the leader and harpist at
the end of the first were sensitively done.
It's a work shot through with tragic march episodes: bloodied but
unbowed. The extended silence after the epilogue before the first
burst of applause was eloquent.
If the quiet moments were laced with distant bells from St Mary's it
remains an indelibly memorable evening especially for a remarkably
fine performance of the Vaughan Williams.
http://www.todmordennews.co.uk/lifestyle/lifestyle-leisure-and-entertainment/music_of_rivers_and_remembrance_1_3986959
From: A. Papazian