England’s supreme and pleasant sounds

Review of our concert at St Mary’s Church, 27 March 2010 by John Bulleyment

Banbury Symphony Orchestra’s spring concert was a major triumph for the players and the conductor. It was an all-English affair and the better for it. The first work, William Walton’s Spitfire Prelude and Fugue, was played with appropriate panache. The prelude contains one of the those tunes which send shivers of pleasure down your back and the subject of the fugue will be replaying itself in my mind for days to come.

Elgar’s Nursery Suite is full of the nostalgia and dreams of better times, a theme that haunts his other later work. In the quiet passages, of which there were many, the orchestra produced some ravishing sounds. My main reason for attending the concert was to hear Malcolm Arnold’s Fourth Symphony. Arnold, sadly, seems to have become unfashionable in recent years so it was rewarding to be given the chance to hear this wonderful symphony live. And what a performance it was! The orchestra playing with total commitment and enthusiasm did the composer proud. Much of the excitement was generated by the large percussion section. If it is possible to express rage in music, Arnold seems to have achieved it in the last movement. His outrage at the 1958 Notting Hill race riots produced a sustained musical assault, which was mind-numbing in its impact.

So congratulations and thanks to the BSO and Paul Willett for a memorable concert. If they can produce this quality for English music, please may we have more.

Review published in the Banbury Guardian, 5th Nov. 2009

Banbury Chamber Orchestra Concert 17 October 2009

THE sudden burst of sound that opens Rossini's The Italian Girl in Algiers proved a fitting beginning to the Banbury Chamber Orchestra's debut concert in Deddington.