Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra
Season 2008-2009 Reviews
June 2009 - Two familiar composers and two less well known
The Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra website
A couple of years back, I talked to one conductor who remarked that he preferred working with amateur orchestras because of the wide range of professions to be found amongst the ranks. I have heard that the SPO has a large concentration of members of the medical profession. As far as I know, they are all human doctors, so this concert would have been quite a change for them.
The opening piece, the Festive Overture by Shostakovich, is as good a curtain raiser as any. Written at feverish pace (and played accordingly!) the opening brass fanfare heralded the start of an entertaining night. Certainly it gave Roberto Meoni a chance to clear the passageways in his clarinet. The music continued at a breakneck pace (I don't mind hearing Shostakovich at this pace, just don't ask me to sit in his passenger seat - although with that many doctors in attendance I might survive)
The second piece in the programme was a new discovery to most of the audience. Karlowicz is not one of the better known composers which is a pity for those who enjoy late Romantics. The Eternal Songs are a brilliant evocation of the Tatra Mountains in Southern Poland. The music is a depiction of natural landscape rather than anything man made. The opening moody atmosphere dissolved into some lush string music in the second episode which created magical moments. In the final section the rhythmical playing of the violins was much in evidence - an effect sometimes lost on CD. The ending was sheer ecstasy.
After the interval there was a rare incursion into the concert repertoire of a piece by the Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski. I've heard his music in the past and it needs a degree of quality to bring off his orchestral pieces. This offering was the Dance Preludes a set of five short pieces for Clarinet and strings (including a piano). Once again we heard Roberto Meoni in fine form, and this was a powerful argument in favour of Lutoslawski. More like this please!
The concert ended with Rachmaninov's final piece, his Symphonic Dances of 1940. This work, in my view, is not one of his finest. It is a work for performers and scholars. For performers, it is a challenge requiring a high degree of concentration. For scholars, it recalls the old story of Hamlet being full of quotations. Those familiar with Rachmaninov's output will recognise the self quotations. The deficiencies in the musicdidn't stop the orchestr. This was a fine performance.
After the concert, I heard someone remark that the orchestra would have been incapable of such a performance not that long ago. I think that there are few conductors who would programme two Polish works in a concert. For all this, we have much to thank Ewa.
I keep mentioning the medical profession. However, one does not have to be a trained veterinarian to appreciate that this concert was the bees' knees.
March 2009 -
An intriguing mix of the familiar with the unfamiliar
The Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra website
I WILL start by getting a couple of observations out of the way. This concert involved the use of a choir to perform a piece relating a mother's witnessing of her son's execution. The concert took place the evening before Mother's Day. (I'm tempted to recall that a few years ago, when a royal couple were going through some marriage difficulties, they were taken to see Verdi's
Otello at Covent Garden...)
Anyway, rant 2 concerns a choir. Not the Escafeld Chorale who looked (and sounded) the part on Saturday night, but the rainbow clad amazons who appear at the Last Night of the Proms. There is a lot to be said for the sight of a uniformly dressed choir; it shows they mean business. The Escafeld Choir certainly meant business in this concert.
This concert took place at the Victoria Hall, Sheffield.
The concert opened with a rare item, the Etude for Orchestra by Karol Szymanowski. It is particularly worth mentioning a couple of points about this work. It was originally written as a piano piece and was orchestrated by Grzegorz Fitelberg. To listen to it, one felt that it had originally been written as a piece for orchestra. A recording of it has just been released on Naxos with the Warsaw Philharmonic (Fitelberg, incidentally orchestrated works by other composers including his friend Mieczyslaw Karlowicz whose Eternal Songs op. 10 are part of the SPO's next concert).
The Poulenc Stabat Mater gave us a chance to hear the voices of the (augmented) Escafeld Chorale. I was talking to one member of the orchestra and he commented on how much improved the choir were since their first concert with the SPO. This was the first time I had heard this choir and I was impressed by the standard of their singing. Certainly their enunciation was clear and I heard words that are not always understandable on CD. As well as the choir we heard the young soprano Chloe Saywell for whom a bright future is predicted. Certainly all three elements came together well for this piece.
At the end one of the choir fainted, a case of mater non stabat , I understand that she was all right. It's a bit of a squeeze getting a 60 strong choir on to the platform and to do so meant limiting the number of chairs, otherwise the front row would have been very close to the front.
The final work in the concert was the 4th Symphony by Brahms. This is, according to the writer of the programme notes, the composer's finest symphony, and after this performance it was easy to see why they believed this.
The performance exceeded expectations according to one source close to the orchestra and showed the quality of playing that we have come to expect from the modern SPO.
As an aside, I spoke to one member of the audience during the interval who had spent the afternoon watching a football match. "The tea's better here than at [name of ground withheld]." he said.
"So's the entertainment." I replied. He couldn't argue with that!
November 2008 -
Ewa's Italian Job
THERE is a famous quotation by Orson Welles which compares Switzerland with Italy. To paraphrase it, Switzerland had hundreds of years of brotherly love and peace which produced the cuckoo clock whereas the turmoil in Italy produced the Renaissance.
Saturday's concert had an Italian theme to it. Two Italian composers, Verdi and Respighi, and a French piece 'Harold in Italy' by Berlioz (in which the Italian made viola sang beautifully). Although the cuckoo clock is a fine example of precision engineering, and today's SPO play like a well oiled precision machine, it was, once again, the renaissance of the orchestra which attracted favourable comments.
The first piece in the programme was the overture to the Opera 'Nabucco' by Verdi. It was almost a disappointment that only the overture was played. Certainly this performance made this listener eager to hear the full opera (but it was too much to expect the Victoria Hall caretaker to raise the curtain behind the stage).
This was followed by Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite no 2 which dates from the 1920s (The same decade as Stokowski's reworking of Bach's Toccata and Fugue which they performed earlier in the year). Take a piece by an obscure composer and rework his music to create a new piece. Hence a new lease of life for Caroso, Besard, Gianoncelli and our old friend Anon. There was a moment of magic in the first piece as the woodwind choir simulated the sound of a baroque pipe organ. Lift off was achieved at the start of the final piece, the Bergamasque with the ground bass prominent and the harpsichord giving an account of itself.
After the interval came Berlioz's Harold in Italy a work with a prominent part for viola. The viola soloist on this occasion was Robin Ireland.
This work is all too rarely performed, so this performance was a rare treat. It was a chance to hear the rich sound from Robin's 1630 Amati viola. Some may know Robin from his days with the Lindsays, others may have attended the occasional workshops for viola, Others again may know him as the composer of the last new piece performed by the Lindsays.
This was an enjoyable experience; certainly the memory of the viola accompanied by the harp is a memory that will remain in the memory for a long time. The orchestra were on fine form in Berlioz's testing orchestration and the result was another triumphant evening.
Season 2007-2008 Reviews
Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra herald a new era.
The Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra websiteAT first glance this may not have seemed that interesting an evening. The Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra have not been the greatest attraction in the past couple of years; the soloist seemed unknown (although there is a violinist with one of the BBC orchestras with the same surname); there was a new conductor, from Eastern Europe.
However, I had noticed that there were compelling reasons for attending this concert. One might even say 5000 reasons, a figure which represented in Euros the prize money awarded in the 2007 International Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition to Ewa Strusinska, the new conductor of the SPO. Fourth Prize is no mean achievement (none of the Brits made it this far!). We could believe that Ewa would bring out the best in the orchestra. We were not disappointed.
A source close to the orchestra had told me how good they were sounding these days - "They play for each other".
This is an amateur orchestra. The players perform for the enjoyment of what they do. (A recent rehearsal took place with a substitute conductor - good grounds for some of the musicians taking the night off, perhaps? Wrong! It was a full turnout.) Amateur in this sense equates with enjoyment. Certainly in performance we saw this communicated from Ewa who was relishing every moment. It is rare to see a conductor smiling in performance. Ewa was positively beaming. The orchestra has a strong string section - nearly two dozen violins alone, who have the self confidence needed for this repertoire. This enthusiasm has spread through the orchestra. The last movement in the Dvorak Eighth Symphony opens with a solo trumpet, a call to arms or a hejnal. At one time this might have been embarrassing. Not on this form it wasn't. The orchestra is the Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra. There were times when I felt proud that they were bearing the name of my city.
A source at the Victoria Hall tells me that the Yuli Torchinsky, leader of the BBC Philharmonic, was at the concert. He was not playing, merely observing his son Dmitri playing the Sibelius Violin Concerto. It was only after the performance that we realised just why this was. Dmitri was making his concert debut with a live audience. Quite a few members of the orchestra did not know this, we just observed the look of incredulity on their faces at the news. Dmitri's playing had given the impression he was a seasoned concerto performer. Certainly there must be easier concertos to debut with.
The concert had opened with Mozart's Magic Flute overture. Current fashion seems to be to perform this with smaller numbers, but I'm sure Wolfgang would have enjoyed the fullness of sound generated.
The Victoria Hall, Sheffield is the "Methodist Cathedral" in the city. To mark the 300th Anniversary of Methodism, a string quartet by Charles Wesley the Younger was played by the massed strings. An interesting idea, playing the encore straight after the interval.
Make no mistake, this is an orchestra to take seriously. People will no longer be going out of a sense of duty, but because they want to hear a high standard of music making. The Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra can now deliver.
March concert review
The Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra website
THE programme was three popular Russian works: Borodin: In the Steppes of Central Asia, Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 2 and Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 4. An ambitious programme, some might say challenging even. However, the new SPO took it in its stride. The venue, St John's Ranmoor takes a lot of filling, but the side pews to my left were full. No doubt the audience had been attracted by the works on offer. The gentleman to my right told me he'd first heard the Tchaikovsky performed by the RPO under Beecham (no pressure to compete, there) some fifty years ago.
Some members of the audience had an idea what to expect, having heard the November concert; others had yet to experience the Glorious Ewa effect. The concert began with the Borodin. We were treated to a precision in the horn solo that some professional orchestras would, at times, envy. The work ended with a delicate flute solo. An impressive orchestral opening.
The soloist in the Rachmaninov, Alexandra Dariescu, is another young female musician with a great future. Still in her early twenties, Alexandra Dariescu has travelled the world doing recitals since her debut as a soloist with the Kisinev Symphony Orchestra at the age of nine. She has been heard on many radio broadcasts, and is the winner of no less than 27 competitions, including the 2005 Eastbourne Young Soloist of the Year. Her performance brought out the tingle factor all right.
And so to the second half and the Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony. A loud work in places? Certainly. Yet it was the delicacy displayed in the first movement which lingers long in the memory.
There had been a rehearsal in the afternoon, and it would have been natural to expect some flagging as the concert drew to its close. However the intensity was there in the final movement. Tchaikovsky incorporated a Russian Song into this last movement; "In the fields there stood a birch tree". Anyone ever going to Poland will see that the birch tree is ubiquitous. No wonder Ewa felt at home in this movement and gave the orchestra free rein.
The audience were ecstatic at the end. A few I saw were on their feet, others were clapping and stamping their feet. One comment was "I wouldn't have missed this concert for the world."
And the comment of the Beecham spectator?
He declared this performance to be no less exciting.
June Concert Review
The Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra website
IT would be wrong to say that I was happy with everything at this concert; in fact there were a couple of causes for discontent.
I would have liked to have seen the church fuller. Certainly playing of this standard deserves a better attendance. Let's make it known: this is not the same orchestra who performed in recent years. Under Ewa Strusinska the standard of playing has improved beyond all measure. (I am tempted to recall a famous musician who was asked about Simon Rattle's impact on the CBSO who insisted that they were great musicians anyway.)
The programme started with Leopold Stokowski's orchestration of what many regard as J.S. Bach's most famous piece, the Toccata and Fugue in d minor. I know some don't believe that this was by Bach in the first place; certainly in its organ form it tests the instrument to its full capabilities. This performance tested the orchestra who were not found wanting. I heard details that I've never heard in recordings. A good start.
It would be easy to imagine that were were listening to some foreign orchestra with a foreign conductor, although one wonders if a foreign orchestra would programme the next piece, Henry Czyz's Canzone di Barroco or tack it on to the end of the programme as an encore. The SPO have a strong string section who relished the opportunity to play this. Think, if you can, of a Polish "Barber's Adagio for strings" or even a Polish "Corigliano Voyage" and you will understand this piece. It is only fitting that a Polish Conductor, proud of her heritage, introduces us to the lesser known music of her homeland. (I'm one of those who is disappointed at hearing foreign performers send us on our way with a bit of Elgar.) Maybe if the Polish musical authorities had been more receptive to the very idea of a female conductor, then Ewa would not have left Poland. It's their loss and our gain. (Maybe if Ewa can record this piece with the Hallé, Classic FM would have a potential hit).
With Liszt's Les Preludes we were back on familiar territory. Certainly the brass enjoyed being included again after the Czyz. One friend in the audience said it was like meeting an old friend again after hearing this piece. Once again we had a piece which emphasised the qualities of the SPO.
The final work, after the interval, was Franck's Symphony in d minor, a work rarely heard on the concert platform, its third and final movement here imbued with all the necessary joie de vivre.
My final rant came at the end. The orchestra ended the applause far too early. They were worthy of at least a further half minute.
So there are my grounds for discontent: too small an audience and not enough opportunity to show appreciation of fine playing.
In performance, Ewa conducts with a smile. There is no doubt that she enjoys what she does. My dictionary defines amateur as one who does something for the love of it. The orchestra's members are amateurs; they do it for the enjoyment.
As for the audience: these days we are all amateurs.
