Reveiw: An Alpine Symphony, Leeds Town Hall, Saturday April 1, 2017

AN Alpine Symphony was composed by Richard Strauss for a vast orchestra of Wagnerian dimensions - well in excess of one hundred musicians. Strauss's extravagant orchestration specifies a hecklephone, wind machine, cow bells, organ and celeste in addition to quadrupled woodwind, fifteen French horns, four Wagner tubas, a formidable array of percussion and a large body of strings.

The Orchestra of Opera North's legendary concert performances of Wagner's Ring Cycle have unquestionably deepened the players' understanding of monumental musical architecture. An Alpine Symphony opened majestically and mysteriously with the slow, descending theme depicting 'Night' gave way to blinding rays of light from the full orchestra evoking 'Sunrise'. Conductor Adrian Leaper - heroically deputising at short notice for an indisposed Aleksandar Markovic - subtly built up the dense mulyi-layered textures into a succession of incandescent tuttis.

Strauss's fluid orchestral scene painting matches the genius of Wagner's evocation of nature in Siegfried, the fairytale third instalment of The Ring. In the spacious acoustic of Leeds Town Hall, the tumultuous Alpine storm aided by thunder and wind machines enveloped the entire audience. The transparency and delicacy of pastoral sections depicting bird song, flowery meadows or waterfalls made just as indelible an impression as the cataclysmic climaxes.

Programmed as a precursor to the bracing Alpine soundscape, the juxtaposition of Sibelius at his most atmospheric and Max Bruch in Scottish country dance mode could have hardly been more striking. The Orchestra of Opera North conducted by Adrian Leaper brilliantly captured the other-worldly atmosphere of dark Nordic forests so ingeniously crafted by Sibelius in his swansong, the Symphonic Poem Tapiola. Jack Liebeck's imaginative phrasing turned Bruch's Scottish Fantasia for Violin and Orchestra into much more than merely an ingratiating potpourri of Scottish folk tunes.

by Geoffrey Mogridge