Airedale Symphony Orchestra, Victoria Hall, Saltaire, Sunday, January 22, 2017

A CHILLY grey January Sunday afternoon, but inside Titus Salt's ornate Victoria Hall there was a palpable buzz of anticipation. The Airedale Symphony Orchestra, conducted as ever by John Anderson, had unusually programmed three works written for sections of a typical symphony orchestra.

The ASO brass opened the concert with a resonating performance of the splendid Fanfare from Paul Dukas' music for Diaghilev's ballet, La Peri. Next came the winds with Richard Strauss's Suite in B flat. The young Strauss composed this piece at the behest of conductor Hans von Bulow for a combination of double woodwind, plus contrabassoon and four French horns. The ASO's talented players, conducted by Anderson, made every bar of this youthful score spring to life. Dvorak's charming thirty minute-long Serenade for Stings completed the generous first half. The ASO's orderly reading of this lovely work had both rhythmic precision and clarity of texture - no mean feat given the large contingent of forty five strings.

Scarcely could there have been a more appropriate finale to unite the entire orchestra of seventy musicians than Beethoven's triumphal Fifth Symphony. John Anderson's interpretation of this iconic masterwork was Imbued with urgency. Beethoven's contrapuntal writing in the third movement Scherzo was wonderfully clear. The tightness and precision of the trio section with a very quiet passage for pizzicato strings ushered in the barnstorming fourth movement. Clarion horn calls, blazing trumpets, trombones and sonorous timpani were underpinned by the sinewy strings. The coda was tumultuous, the whole experience exhilarating. A capacity audience responded with warmth and enthusiasm.

by Geoffrey Mogridge