Airedale Symphony Orchestra

A generous helping of four Twentieth Century works for large orchestra by two English, an Italian and an Armenian composer attracted a sizeable audience to the King's Hall for the ASO's Spring concert. The English composers were represented by two of their best-loved tone pictures: Elgar's Cockaigne Overture "In London Town", and the Walk to the Paradise Garden - the famous intermezzo from Delius's opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet.
Cockaigne - a medieval notion of a fictitious land of flowing wine and easy living - is the backdrop for Elgar's picture of the Capital City at the beginning of the Edwardian era as experienced by a young couple. I noted the fruity-sounding brass in the ASO's ebullient performance of this work and John Anderson's stately account of the finale, missing only the optional organ embellishments.

ir Thomas Beecham scaled down the orginal orchestration of the Walk to the Paradise Garden to facilitate concert performances. Delius scores for large orchestra including 28 woodwind and brass, reduced in Beecham's arrangement to 17. Delius scholar Tony Summers falls somewhere between the two with a requirement for 23 woodwind and brass- the edition played by the ASO. The increased number of players undoubtedly enhances the effect of the dreamily evocative woodwind writing. Anderson presided over an expansive reading, giving his players space to point up the delicate colours of Delius's pastoral soundscape.

We then come to the two "novelties" in this enterprising programme - Aram Khachaturian's Violin Concerto in D minor was composed in 1940 and played that same year in Moscow by David Oistrakh. Classical in outline but brash and exuberant in character, the rich, folk-infused melodies do give the concerto an endearing quality. Alexander Sitkovetsky was the outstanding soloist with the ASO; alive to the rhapsodic quality of the solo line and pushing the Armenian folk music ornamention for all it was worth.

Respighi's Roman Festivals is the least often played of his triology of tone poems portraying the Eternal City. The orchestration could be described as overblown and spectacularly gaudy but the spectrum of sonorities and colours displayed by the ASO was particularly impressive. The placing of additional trumpets high up in a balcony box provided that extra frisson of excitement.
Geoffrey Mogridge. Ilkley Gazette and Wharfedale and Airedale Observer