Enjoyable concert by town orchestra
A CAPACITY audience enjoyed an accomplished concert by Loughborough Orchestra at Emmanuel Church.
Tchaikovsky’s Marche Slave was an ideal opening choice, combining as it does, excellent string passages and crisp percussion and stirring brass.
The orchestra handled particularly well the slow crescendo which depended upon good dynamics between the strings and percussion; the difficult flute passages were handled sensitively during the counterpart themes of the Russian national anthem, known from the 1812, and the counter theme held by the strings.
It was an impressive and rousing start to the concert.
Mendelssohn’s Vio- lin Concerto in E minor followed and there was an expectation of enjoyment here as the well-liked Yulia Nortridzh returned as the soloist in this hugely popular piece.
A possible lack of acoustic balance during the opening few bars of the concerto (taken at a great lick) meant it was difficult to hear her clearly, however, once her impressive cadenza had been faultlessly rendered, the balance was excellent; her lyrical playing during the andante was really moving.
The Allegro Molto Vivace was very fast indeed and Yulia Northridzh’s delivery was full of well-articulated fast runs and arpeggios and here the difficult balance between soloist and orchestra was again well-maintained.
There was welldeserved great acclaim from the audience at the end of the piece.
The second half of the concert comprised Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 in D major.
This extremely difficult piece is by turns brooding, lush, sinister and dramatic.
It seems to be more a selection of motifs as in a tone poem rather than a main theme or secondary theme that might be developed and recognised that you would carry away with you from the concert, as you undoubtedly would from the Tchaikovsky and the Mendelssohn.
There were impressive facets of this Symphony that do stay in the mind: the unusual pizzicato opening of the second movement, the disturbing tonal fragments reminiscent of Benjamin Britten’s ‘Peter Grimes’ and the gradual climb to the Romantic crescendo in D major.
Trevor Lax and the orchestra are to be commended for the hard work that obviously went into this enjoyable concert.