Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra
Archive Reviews
- 2005/2006 season -
November 2005 - Elgar, Tippett
February 2006 - Wagner, Mahler, Bruch, Dvorak
April 2006 - Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Torke, Gershwin
Saturday, November 14th, 2005
"Powerful and impassioned"
Concert review by David Hammond, Huddersfield Examiner
Michael Tippett's oratorio, A Child of our Time, is a most fitting work for this season of Remembrance - narrating, as it does, the evils of man's inhumanity to man, nd the treasures of spiritual consolation.
The piece received a powerful and impassioned performance at the Town Hall on Saturday, with the joint forces of the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra and the Huddersfield Choral Society, and the services of four splendid professional soloists.
Tippett's treatment of favourite spirituals like Steal Away and Go Down, Moses, turns them into heady drama, and the singers made the most of it, emphasising the contrating dynamics with authority and style.
Conductor Nicholas Cleobury managed to marshal his large forces with the degree of co-ordination the piece requires, and the orchestra proved as responsive to his demands as the choristers.
The concert opened with Elgar's Overture, In the South (Alassio), a work of near-symphonic proportions, inspired by an Italian holiday where cold and rain preceded any sunny weather.
But it is the warmth and vibrancy of the country which is conveyed in this eloquent, descriptive music. And the lavish orchestration gave all sections of the orchestra a chance to shine.
Huge swathes of power from the strings, colourful woodwind and strident brass built up the atmosphere before a change to nostalgic mood, with gentle harp and pianissimo strings.
The handling of the conclusion, with its grandiose, sweeping theme, revealed Elgar at his most sonorous and majestic.
Saturday, February 4th, 2006
"A treat for concertgoers"
Concert review by David Hammond, Huddersfield Examiner
Home-grown forces produced a treat for concertgoers at the Town Hall on Saturday.
Kenneth Heeks, principal clarinet with the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra, and his daughter Dawn Bennett (viola) were excellent soloists in Max Bruch's Concerto for Clarinet and Viola.
Like the composer's famous Violin Concerto, this work contains a wealth of lovely melodies, delivered with fluency, sweet tone and good balance, whilst a skilled and sympathetic accompaniment came from the orchestra, conducted by Natalia Luis-Bassa.
Both in the rather melancholic opening movement and the cheerful, extrovert finale, the spirit of the piece shone through strongly.
The programme had opened with the orchestra showing a good grasp of the richly orchestrated score of Wagner's operatic overture, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, with the main theme colourfully declaimed by the brass choir and the grandiloquent conclusion emerging with power and conviction.
A moving account of the familiar Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No5 found pianissimo strings and gentle harp wonderfully conveying its yearning, elegiac content.
Just how well Natalia Luis-Bassa is working with the "Phil" was proved in a convincing and exciting reading of Dvorak's Symphony No8 in G.
Here, mellow horns and trombones, merrily piping flute and sonorous strings built up the atmosphere in the first movement, while in the second, smooth and soothing woodwind passages contrasted with dramatic outbursts from strings and brass.
Silken strings tunefully interpreted the waltz theme of the third movement. In the concluding Allegro, deep-throbbing basses, blazing brass and pulsating strings produced much drama, though, as in the New World Symphony, Dvorak interrupts the excitement for one of hs simple, nostalgic melodies, gently played.
Saturday, April 29th, 2006
"A splendid performance..."
Concert review by Chris Robins, Huddersfield Examiner
Conductor Natalia Luis-Bassa grows in stature. She has improved Huddersfield Philharmonic's attack and ensemble and she is able to shape and phrase the music.
No mean feat in this programme of episodic works by two Russians who are anything but Russian in style and two Americans whose musical language is American through and through.
Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Festival Overture is a soulless exercise in brilliant west European orchestration, devoid of development and full of awkward pauses. Yet Luis-Bassa was able to make some musical sense of it.
Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet suite is - by its very nature - bitty and "westernised". Yet here, Luis-Bassa drew from the Philharmonic a sense of flow and coherence, and her subtle phrasing in the Czardas injected some blood into Tchaikovsky's effete little dance.
The mainstream and slightly minimalist contemporary American composer Michael Torke can trace his style back to Gershwin. His Concerto for Soprano Saxophone is sunny in temperament and largely dependent on three pleasing tunes.
Soloist Anna Lamplough, a Huddersfield University Graduate now studying with Rob Buckland and Andy Scott at the Royal Northern College of Music, was utterly committed to the concertante role Torke has cast for her, and wonderfully responsive to the ripieno ripplings in the orchestra behind her.
An American in Paris is awash with genuine humanity and meaning. Gershwin knew it. Luis-Bassa and the orchestra knew it too, and gave a splendid performance.
Huddersfield Philharmonic Society is a registered charity.