Airedale Symphony Orchestra

Last Concert

Sunday 29 June 2008.  King's Hall, Ilkley

Review 

A challenging programme featuring a new work by Leeds composer William Kinghorn and two of the best-loved orchestral showpieces from the 19th Century attracted a nearly full house to the ASO's Summer concert. 

Smetana's depiction of the river Vltava is the most frequently played of his six symphonic poems entitled Ma Vlast (My Fatherland).   The full-toned ASO strings captured the broad flow of the work and the woodwind - a little loud in the opening - produced some delicate colours in the beautiful "moonlight" section. Elsewhere, the performance under John Anderson's direction pulsated with rhythmic vitality.

If the idea of sandwiching Kinghorn's Fantasia on a theme by Paganini between two orchestral favourites amounted to "sugaring the pill" - then why not? Concert promoters usually programme works by dead composers. It is all too rare an event for one to be able to hear his own work played and then bask in the applause of both orchestra and audience as Kinghorn did in the King's Hall last Sunday evening.  Originally for solo piano, the Fantasia was re-worked at John Anderson's suggestion as a set of variations for piano and full symphony orchestra.

Kinghorn's frequent and rapid changes in rhythmical patterns placed considerable demands on the orchestra and they surmounted the challenges of this difficult modern score with complete assurance. Balance between the orchestra and pianist Julian Cima's brilliant and highly coloured reading of the solo piano part was always finely judged.

Tchaikovsky conducted the successful premiere of his Opus 74, the "Pathetique" Symphony, and died just nine days later. The murky depths of the symphony's prologue declaimed by a solo bassoon and string basses portend tragedy and the grieving final bars of the work are utterly devoid of consolation or hope. The ASO strings were at their most poignantly expressive in the symphony's outer movements. The explosive march movement usually provokes spontaneous, if intrusive, applause and certainly deserved to on this occasion but the audience wisely sat on their hands until the end. After the music had ebbed away, a few seconds of stillness before the ovation broke out in response to Anderson and the ASO for a performance which achieved the right balance of strength and pathos.

Review by Geoffrey Mogridge.  Wharfedale and Airedale Observer, Ilkley Gazette.