REVIEW: by William Marshall. from Huddersfield Examiner 26 April 2010
DURING her introductory remarks, conductor Natalia Luis-Bassa raised doubts over whether she, a Venezuelan, could do interpretive justice to an all-English programme.
She was being light-hearted. But if the programme had been all-German, all-Italian or all-French, the jest would probably not have ..read more
Apr 23 2010 by Val Javin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner
WHAT more could you ask for, musically speaking, on St George’s Day than a concert of English music?
And that is what Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra has in store at Huddersfield Town Hall tomorrow (April 24) with a programme that celebrates the best of ..read more
An innovation in this concert was that conductor Natalia Luis-Bassa spoke at some length to the audience in between items, describing and analysing them quite humorously.
It perhaps says something about the entrenched formality of classical music concerts that it should be such a surprise when lines of verbal communication are ..read more
Here’s where you could help us. Nowadays, we feature the biographies of our conductors regularly in our concert programmes. Back in the 1920s and 1930s they barely got a mention. So we know that J Fletcher Sykes took up the baton as conductor in 1920 and that he was succeeded ..read more
In addition to being Principal Conductor of the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra, Natalia is Musical Director of the Haffner Orchestra in Lancaster and the Hallam Sinfonia in Sheffield. Since winning the second prize at the Maazel-Vilar Conductors’ Competition in New York in 2002, she has worked with orchestras both in the ..read more
Nicholas Cleobury is a highly versatile conductor who has established a considerable reputation in the concert hall, opera house and recording studio. He studied with Sir Adrian Boult and was assistant to numerous leading conductors, notably Bernstein, Boulez and Haitink. His sense of period style was nurtured early as conductor ..read more
Just My Bill
This extract from a newspaper article from the 1890s throws some light on William Henry Cross, the first conductor of the “Phil” under its new name (adopted in 1884). The article was supplied by Margaret Hall, an Australian descendant of Mr Cross, and reads:
“Although the composer is doubtless ..read more