Hastings Sinfonia

St John the Evangelist, Brittany Road, St Leonards
Saturday 1 February 2020

Hastings Sinfonia’s Winter Concert was a challenging mix of music and musical styles. They also had the good fortune to attract three professional soloists across their eclectic programme. The first half was given over entirely to Beethoven’s Violin Concert with Daniel Rainey as soloist. He produced some lovely long musical lines, floating above the weight of the orchestra which at times came close to drowning him out – possibly a result of the acoustic in the church rather than the dynamics set by conductor Derek Carden. The slow movement faired best with some lovely bassoon solos playing around the violinist’s seemingly improvised lines.

The second half opened in similarly weighty vein with Franck’s Symphonic Variations. Howard Southern, a regular soloist with the Sinfonia, was the pianist here and managed to give some structure to a work which can seem all too disparate until the ‘tune’ breaks through towards the end.

After that we seemed to be in to a very different event, with a succession of shorter popular items, led by soprano Thomasin Trezise singing Musetta’s Waltz Song from La boheme and Juliet’s Waltz Song from Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette. Both items were, rightly, enthusiastically received as she not only sings them superbly but know how to play her audience to get the right response.

Two recent works brought us Polo Piatti’s romantically indulgent but finely scored Days gone by and a world premiere of Garry Judd’s Chuff. Happily linked to Hastings own local railways, it describes an imaginary journey as the steam train pulls away, encounters hills and gradually arrives at its destination. It is a lovely work and certainly deserves to be much more widely known.

Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance is obviously a favourite with the orchestra and brought out all their raucous strength before the final part of Elgar’s Enigma Variations which needs not only full orchestra but the organ as well.

A fine evening, packed to capacity in St John’s, and one to send us on our way feeling contended.

Maidstone Symphony Orchestra

Mote Hall, Maidstone, 1 February 2020

There are few more atmospheric pieces than Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes. It only needs a bar or two of those ethereal pianissimo high strings and you’re standing on the remote Suffolk coast gazing out to sea. MSO had imported lots of extra players for this ambitious piece (and the Elgar with which the concert ended) so we had double brass, four percussionists and eight double basses – all contributing to the colourful descriptiveness which Brian Wright drew out of the orchestra.

Then we skipped 150 years back to the classical world of Weber and reduced forces to accompany Emma Johnson in the second Clarinet Concerto. Always a charismatic player, she twinkled with delight as she played, turning the concerto into an engaging musical conversation, especially in the first movement. She also gave us a nicely controlled andante and enjoyably sparky syncopation in the third movement.

Unusual programming meant she was again the soloist in another concerto after the interval. Malcolm Arnold’s second Clarinet Concerto is not very well known and, although she played it with panache, it’s obvious why we don’t hear it more often. It’s an incongruous mixture of disparate elements including a long improvised cadenza, a soulful central lento and then “The pre-Goodman Rag”. Even Johnson’s fine playing and Brian Wright’s skilful direction failed to endow it with any sense of cohesion.

And so, finally, to Enigma Variations in which all those mood changes and potential pitfalls were adeptly negotiated with the wit of Variation 3 and Variation 11 nicely brought out. It was also a treat to hear Elgar’s imaginative orchestration so clearly stressed: the tuba in Variation 7, the piccolo in Variation 8 and the viola and bassoon solos in Variation 10, for example. And I admired the tempi in Variation 9 (Nimrod). There often is a tendency to play it so slowly that it feels as if it’s dragging. Wright resisted that by keeping it moving which worked well.

In short, another good night for MSO.

Susan Elkin