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The culmination of Southbank Sinfonia's two day residency came with an outstanding concert that allowed the College's best instrumental musicians to play alongside the professionals. Intensive rehearsals and preparation brought together some eighty performers in the The Memorial Hall that was filled with an enthusiastic audience of pupils, parents, Common Room and friends of the College.
Energy levels were turned immediately to “high” as conductor, Philip Dukes, set a brisk rhythm for Leroy Anderson’s festive Fiddle Faddle, the playful spirit of the strings being matched by the swoops and swirls of the woodwind.
A performance of the third and fourth movements of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings was directed from the leader’s desk by Adrian Eales. The precision of the playing was a highlight, but this was in no sense a mechanical performance. The lyrical passages showed a well controlled legato throughout the ensemble; there was space, emotion and understanding in the phrasing, and the bright rhythms and attack from all quarters in the final movement made us aware of the supreme achievement that had been wrought in bringing together the professional and College players.
Two pieces by the College's wind orchestra, Brasser, took us vividly into different and exciting worlds of sound. The metallic percussion of Jack Stamp’s Gavorkna Fanfare was punchy and forthright, while the mesmeric pulse of Robert Smith’s Africa: Ceremony of Song and Ritual Africa drew us forward to a visualising of dances, ceremonies and celebrations through a screen of drum beats, shakers, bells, wood blocks and the evocative extremes of low and high brass and woodwind.
To conclude an outstanding evening of music, the stage was packed for the seventeen minutes of continuous crescendo that is Ravel’s Boléro. If there were any lingering doubts as to the unforgettable benefits of the SBS residency, the sound of the solos intertwining between College pupils and professionals will certainly have dispelled them.
By way of an encore, Fiddle Faddle taken at a blistering pace kept the orchestra on its toes and the audience’s adrenalin flowing extremely happily. |