Airedale Symphony Orchestra
Victoria Hall, Saltaire
January 19
A capacity audience welcomed the ASO for this Sunday afternoon Classical Spectacular conducted and introduced by John Anderson.
Franz von Suppe’s Light Cavalry Overture with its brass fanfares and rousing march theme opened the programme.
Prokofiev’s complex score for the ballet Romeo And Juliet is technically demanding for the most experienced professional orchestral musicians.
The listener could be pardoned for not realising this, given the ASO’s polished performance of the stirring Montagues and Capulets number beginning with that cataclysmic orchestral tutti before the famous Dance of the Knights theme played here with strength and virility.
Composer Max Bruch is really known for just one classical “pop” – his beautiful Violin Concerto No 1 in G Minor. It’s probably a safe bet that very few will have heard of Bruch’s Kol Nidrei – Adagio on Hebrew Melodies for Cello and Orchestra.
Tim Baker, the ASO’s principal cellist, was the expressive soloist who infused this haunting miniature with such tenderness and depth of feeling.
The concert returned to familiar territory with much-loved excerpts from Grieg’s incidental music for Peer Gynt including Morning and In The Hall Of The Mountain King.
The second half opened with an energised performance of the exotic Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’s opera Prince Igor. A brief visit to Vienna followed with Franz Lehar’s charming Gold And Silver Waltz, played here with a sure sense of the Viennese idiom – and with all repeats observed.
Tchaikovsky’s March Slave, a tumultuous expression of 19th century Russian jingoism, closed the official programme. But there was a surprise encore in store: the ASO delighted this family audience with their performance of Klaus Badelt’s heroic music for the film Pirates Of The Caribbean.
Geoffrey Mogridge
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