Orchestra of Opera North

Leeds Town Hall

The American musical theatre, a political opera set in China, a jazz infused piano concerto, and a symphonic work by a Russian composer vacating on Long Island inspired the Orchestra of Opera North’s colourful ‘American’ themed programme. On stage, the ninety musicians - including two rows of percussion - were conducted with lithesome energy by young Finnish-Ukrainian maestro Dalia Stasevska.

Forbidden love and warring gangs in the steamy Manhattan slums are vividly evoked by pulsating Latin American timbres in the Symphonic Dances from Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ musical West Side Story. The nine dances include a violent and percussive Prologue, the haunting dream ballet sequence ‘Somewhere’, an infectious Mambo - here whipped along at breakneck speed - and the rhythmic ferocity of the Rumble (the death of Tybalt in Shakespeare’s original). Stasevska and the Opera North Orchestra’s scorching performance of this vibrant score could be likened to the flow of molten lava.

Gershwin’s famous Rhapsody in Blue is a fusion of jazz with elements of a romantic piano concerto. 2009 Leeds International Piano Competition winner Sofya Gulyak created a spectrum of keyboard colours. These were complemented by lush orchestral textures - notably the smoky saxophone passages.

The hypnotic rhythmic energy of John Adams’ The Chairman Dances, from the opera Nixon in China, made an exciting modernist precursor to Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances - arguably his most characteristically Russian work. Dalia Stasevska’s fast tempi might have made the Symphonic Dances sound more like movements of a symphony - Rachmaninov had hoped they would eventually be staged as a Ballet. However, the Opera North Orchestra’s virtuosity and brilliant colouring-in of atmospheric detail left nothing wanting. And you could have heard the proverbial pin drop after the ominous final crash of the tam-tam (gong) had faded into infinity.

byGeoffrey Mogridge