This was my first visit to the King's School in Macclesfield, where the Northern Chamber Orchestra have made their home. I was very much looking forward to this concert, but after having experienced their new venue, I now have some mixed feelings. It is very rare in a review that I mention the venue, normally the two things are unrelated. However in this instance, when ones enjoyment and perception of the music can be so drastically altered by the ambience and comfort of the venue, I feel this is relevant. This is a modern school hall, plain and simple. A large, open, unappealing and multi-purpose structure which might suffice the youngsters who attend the school, but right from entering the building, the whole experience for me was akin to the very worst of AmDram or perhaps a parish coffee morning. The hall itself is ill-equipped for a classical concert, the walls are school walls, which they make no attempt to hide, and the seating, although raked, is designed for bodies much smaller than the average adult and we are simply sardined in to these uncomfy plastic chairs. The school does not have the requisite lighting for this concert either since the NCO used 4 stick-lamps of their own to ameliorate; and half way through the concert when the outside tempest blew, the building made us all too aware of it. A large window looking out onto the grounds and absolurely no sound-proofing certainly dd not help. I mention all of this simply because the venue was simply unsuitable for a professional orchestra of this standing, and as such, my enjoyment of the music diminished.
However, to the music itself now.
This 18-piece string ensemble led by renowned soloist Katie Stillman was in fine form. Their programme stretched the musical eras from Baroque to contemporary, and each piece was performed with undoubted skil and precision.
We started with Britten's arrangement of Henry Purcell's Chacony in G Minor. The dynamics were superb, the attention to the detail of the scoring incredible, and despite the piece's boring and repetitive nature, the esemble made it sound sonorous and meaningful.
Following this and we were catapulted right up to the present day with a work written during Lockdown by Anna Clyne, "Stride". Clyne took inspiration, and indeed borrowed the occasion melody fragment from, Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata to create a sounsdscape of varied textures, colours, and emotions. Flirting vagatiously with both contemporary and classival writing techniques, the piece is almost a tone poem in its structure, and on my first hearing of this piece this evening, I found it surprisingly lyrical and satisfying.
The last work before the interval was the absolutely delightful and inspired piece of
writing which is Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony. Not an easy piece to play by any stretch of the imagination, but once again, under Stillman, one need not have worried. The ebulient and playful second movement played entirely plucked pizzicato was a delight, whilst the finale - marked as 'frolicsome' - was just that, and a lovely end to the first half.
The second half was a long and more substantial work. Schubert's String Quartet in D Minor, "Der Tod Und Das Madchen" played here in the arrangement for string chamber orchestra by Gustav Mahler. Once again, the playing of this was irreproachable, and the emotions and dynamics of the piece were simply lovely. The famous second movement from which the piece gets its nane was superb, despite the the storm outside deciding to start just at the most dramatic moment!
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 6.4.23
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