Manchester University Musical Society, known affectionately by the acronym MUMS, gave their last concert of the year this evening at their home base of the Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall inside The Martin Harris Centre hidden among the many buildings which comprise the university.
The concert started in true festive spirit as the Combined Manchester And Salford University Brass Band took the stage.. and concert hall sides! .. to perform 'Once In Royal David's City', 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing', and a lovely piece, a medley on tunes from the animated film, 'The Polar Expess'. Their final two pieces required a lot of audience participation - standing, swaying, whooping etc, but most of the audience were sporting, with a little persuasion, happy to join in with 'The Twelve Days Of Christmas', and a traditional Bavarian Schneewaltz. The band itself however would have benefited greatly from a little more rehearsal and direction.
There was then a fifteen minute hiatus whilst they exited, the stage reconfigured, and we welcomed a somewhat reduced Manchester University Symphony Orchestra. Several different student conductors held the baton throughout the course of the orchestra's time on strage this evening, and it was interesting to note their differing attitudes, and how the instrumentalists responded to each.
Their first piece was the overture to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's musical homage to Longfellow's poem of native American hero, "The Song Of Hiawatha". It is a truly lovely piece of music, and Coleridge-Taylor finds himself so rarely on a programme these days.
Following this and the final piece before the interval was a piece by French composer Jacques Ibert. This was his lovely flute concerto, with the second movement especially lyrical and beautiful. The solo flute was played this evening most competently and capably by university student Jess Pun Lai Yuen. Very enjoyable.
After the interval, during which a group of university carol singers assembled in the gangway's balcony to sing four well known carols and we were encouraged to join in, the concert proper started back in the concert hall with a concerto for coloratura soprano and orchestra by the Late Romantic / Early 20th century Russian composer, Reinhold Gliere. It was not a particularly long work, but the wordless soprano part torturously high and very difficult. Student Ruby Magee coped amazingly with this piece showing her technical expertise as well as bringing some emotion and meaning to her "ohs".
The rather long concert (2.5 hours) finished this evening with The Firebird Suite (1919 version) by another Rusian composer and contemporary of Gliere, Igor Stravinsky. An interesting and pulsating piece of writing which demands more than just a single hearing. In my notes I wrote that the faster third movement felt very much in the vein of the silent movie comedies of the likes of Laurel And Hardy. Jaunty and cinematic in concept; whilst the final movement, a slower and more thoughtful piece, belonged, at least until the final crescendo, to another cinematic genre, and I could easily hear this as background to a quieter scene in a James Bond film. The whole was dynamically and melodically most interesting and pleasing. Wow.
My only other comment on the evening however was that it did not fit the remit of a Festive Concert. Take away the brass band and the interval choir - giving us the standard length and style of a standard classical concert , and there was nothing at all to distinguish this from any other at any other time of the year. We needed festive hats, tinsel, and a few orchestral festive tunes finishing with the ever-popular Sleigh Ride surely???
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