The French Connection

Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra concert

27 April 2013 in Huddersfield Town Hall

Expect the unexpected with ‘España’ by the French composer Chabrier opening this concert of French music. This delightful apéritif had a clicky castanet feel created by pizzicato and staccato playing and the final flourish left me wanting more.

The following musical hors d’oeuvres began with Debussy’s impressionistic Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. The orchestra, minus most of the brass, shimmered with chromatic harmonies beneath gorgeous wind soli.

Two suites ensued. L’Arlésienne Suite No 2 by Bizet reflected a man’s obsession with a girl from Arles in folk-based music. The other, Les Biches by Poulenc, portrayed flirtatious chatter and thoughts in both neo-classic and modernistic styles. Student conductor Séraphine Porte held us spell-bound with her commanding interpretation of the Bizet which was reflected in the orchestra’s stunning performance, notable in the enchanting flute and harp duet (Minuet). Classically phrased and cantabile string melodies were a highlight of the Andantino (Poulenc).

The pièce de résistance? The 3rd Symphony, with organ, by Saint-Saëns. We were treated to a sound-fest which include first-class woodwind performances and crisp brass playing. there were occasional lapses in orchestral ensemble and upper strings wrestled with fast repeated notes (1st movement). Eventually the Town Hall organ crept in with a sustained note and distant chords – soft but audible due to careful registration – underpinning the orchestral harmonies (2nd movement). In the finale it rose from the shadows with bombastic chords, played masterfully by Joseph Cullen, which punctuated the well-executed chorale theme. The tempo revved up towards a fantastic finish with added cymbal crashed and sparkling piano playing held together by maestro Nicholas Smith.

Encore!

Read more: Examiner http://www.examiner.co.uk/leisure-and-entertainment/arts-news/2013/04/29/french-score-leaves-us-wanting-more-from-huddersfield-philharmonic-orchestra-86081-33250763/#ixzz2SM02C3yx

The successful candidate must be available for rehearsals on Tuesday evenings (7.30 to 9.45pm) in central Huddersfield and for scheduled public concerts in Huddersfield Town Hall on Saturdays 9^th November 2013, 8^th February and 26^th April 2014.

Interested parties should submit an up-to-date CV please, together with a covering letter (to include full contact details), to info@huddersfield-phil.org.uk  to be received soonest – and in any case no later than the closing date of midnight on Friday 31^st May 2013. Interviews will take place in late June / early July and it will be assumed that candidates will potentially be available as indicated. Short-listed candidates will be provided with details of the audition process prior to interview.

• Buxtehude – Suite for Antiphonal Brass
• Mozart – Serenade No 10. K361 “Gran Partita” (4 movements only)
• Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No 4
• Kurt Weill – Overture, Tango & Mack the Knife (from the “Threepenny Opera”)
• Mendelssohn – “Ruy Blas” Overture
• Sibelius – Symphonic Poem “Finlandia”
• Sousa – The Liberty Bell March (theme music from Monty Python’s Flying Circus)

Conductor: Nicholas RN Smith

Leader: Mary Barber

Venue: St Peter’s, Huddersfield Parish Church.

Time: starts at 7.30pm prompt

Tickets: £10.00, with concessions from £7.50. Available in advance from Kirklees information centres and Box Office. Or ‘at the door’ on the night (subject to capacity). Children under 16 ‘free’ when accompanied 1:1 with a ticket purchasing adult / parent / grandparent.

Come along and enjoy an evening out with us!

Huddersfield Daily Examiner review by Suzanne Smelt

Monday 11 February 2013

A mighty symphony by Bruckner and two powerful works by his hero, Wagner, telling of love, death and the legend of a devil-cursed sea captain, were on the menu for the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra.

Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman – the mythical seaman – was confidently portrayed by the brass; precise articulation and tuning in the woodwind, and nimble finger-work paired with agile bowing from the violins, also deserves comment.

Innovative for its time, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde Prelude, which embraced love and death, allowed both the expressive strings – with some occasional lapses in cello intonation – and beautiful solo wind melodies, much exposure. A well-paced crescendo led to the impassioned climax before the music seeped away heralding the Liebestod, in which we were mesmerised by the young yet vibrant soprano voice of Cressida Sharp, in a convincing rendition of a challenging Wagner aria.

Highlights, in the opening and closing movements of Bruckner’s 7th symphony, included high-impact and dynamic brass passages – often juxtaposed with sonorous strings – and synchronised woodwind ensemble episodes. The ‘funereal’ second movement included a gargantuan build-up to the tutti explosion, throwing the visiting Wagner tubas into the spotlight. The third dance movement shined with layers of thunderous brass which fought against tempestuous strings. Bubbling string and wind-motifs followed by spine-tingling moments of harmonic tension and resolutions featured in the glorious finale.

Under the confident baton of Nicholas Smith, the orchestra, although lacking forces in the lower strings, produced a highly commendable performance of an ambitious musical programme.

I have submitted this review to the Bruckner Journal; it may or may not be published in July- thanks for an excellent concert last night!

http://www.brucknerjournal.co.uk/

Last year the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra celebrated their 150 year anniversary- even older than the magnificent Town Hall completed in 1881. Of the Classic Italianate style, it incorporates a richly decorated concert hall complete with imposing ornate and functioning organ- a picture of Victorian splendour. A vision enhanced by the brass- positioned high in the huge steps of the choir area overlooking their colleagues and in full view of those of us in the front stalls.

Cressida Sharp sang with passion the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde accompanied sympathetically by Nicholas Smith and his players.

The Bruckner was remarkable. The first movement is marked allegro moderato and this is how it was played- throughout. No concessions. Indeed at times it was more allegro, but this made it sound exciting especially in the coda where the accelerando was observed and the trombones threw down their gauntlet like spears of sound, uninhibited but never ever over the top. The orchestra seeks to recruit further string players, including basses, and this would perhaps add body to the sound when playing this type of music. Having said that, you could actually hear the opening tremolo which makes a very pleasant change!

The adagio was a little faster than adagio, the approach was no-nonsense, completely free of affectation which is good, but perhaps lacking the raw emotion that this music can evoke with a more deliberate cultivation. But I very much prefer this to the soppy sentimentalism or fussy unintelligible tempo changes of other more highly paid conductors. There was none of that here.

Nicholas Smith preceded the symphony with a short humorous introduction, introducing the Wagner tubas who proudly raised their gleaming instruments high, and the trumpets all apparently mid nineteenth century “authentic” rotary valve instruments. The principal trumpet then proceeded to demonstrate with a rendition of the theme tune from a famous northern soap opera…..Unsurprisingly these trumpets had to play the scherzo very fast as per Bruckner’s instruction and demonstrated their skills admirably.

This was the kind of performance that underlines this piece as firmly founded in the Haydnesque classical view of the symphony, the finale played here as a summation of what has gone on before- no need therefore to mess about with the order of the movements. Bruckner gives the option of a pause of discretionary length halfway through; Smith dispensed with this and so maintained a magnificent momentum bringing the symphony to its splendid climax after just 56 minutes- plenty of time for a well- earned glass of wine or even better: a very fine pint of Samuel Smiths Old Brewery Bitter in the pub across the road.

Huddersfield Daily Examiner review by Chris Robins

Monday 12 November 2012

Bravo to Huddersfield’s non-professional orchestra for introducing us to composer Vasily Kalinnikov.

Rachmaninov persuaded the publisher Jurgensen to take on his Second Symphony. Without that endorsement – and earlier encouragement from Tchaikovsky – Kalinnikov would have disappeared without trace. That would have been a pity as his Second Symphony is worth hearing.

Russian in melody and western in orchestration, it does not have much to say, but it says it in style, and it must be a joy to play. Wind and brass were sparky, but strings never quite generated the sustained depth of tone that romantic Russian music requires.

The Symphony is also a touch episodic, like Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances, which were thrillingly played.

Conductor Nicholas Smith began the evening with Elgar’s Nimrod in tribute to Paul Michelson, Marjorie Glendinning and Sheila Garside, Huddersfield Philharmonic players and general champions of Huddersfield music-making who died earlier this year.

Smith has a classic and reliable technique – a “conductor from central casting”, as the Free Times of Columbia, South Carolina described him. But his programme biography description of his firewowrks and laser concerts in the 1990s as “big success: a symphony orchestra makes money” is less reliable as that venture became financially unsustainable.

The concert finished gloriously with Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto in which soloist William Green was poetic and persuasive if a little tense in the second movement. A third year student at Christ Church, Oxford, he is a prodigious talent who will be conducting his College Orchestra in a couple of weeks time.

Paul Nizinskyj was in the audience.

From Russia with love…..

Fresh from the success of a new James Bond film, it was something of a coup by the Huddersfield Philharmonic to name their winter show “From Russia with Love”.

True to theme, myself and my companion went for cocktails beforehand in black tie which, following our arrival at the town hall, prompted the staff to question whether we had arrived for the private reception.

As possibly the worst spies in the world, we of course answered ‘no’,  but it was good to know we were not the only ones dressed for the occasion. The party had booked the mayor’s box and filed past us in single file to their destination like so many emperor penguins.

Sitting in a balcony seat, I could not help but notice the town hall was an ideal setting for a performance of Russian music. The concert room is a stunning example of Victorian neoclassical decor, with its gaudy colours and very deliberate grandiosity evocative of the often outrageously aristocratic opulence of the Steppe.

The orchestra’s first piece, Alexander Borodin’s “Polovtsian Dances”, from his opera “Prince Igor”, provided a dramatic opening to the concert, rising from sleepy clarinets and oboes to a characteristically bawdy Russian orgy of booming big drums and tumbling strings.

The piece is reminiscent of Wagner in its dramatism and ambition and these more fast-paced sections were handled with magnificent energy and force by the orchestra.

This was followed by Vasily Kalinnikov’s second, and last, symphony. Kalinnikov is one of the lesser known Russian composers on account of his death from tuberculosis at the age of 34 so the piece was a welcome showcase of his work to an audience who may never have heard it before. This reviewer was one of them and felt enriched by the introduction.

The show’s pièce de résistance, however, was Sergei Rachmaninov’s piano concerto no.3. Always a popular piece, it was performed with the welcome addition to the orchestra of Baildon student William Green, 21, who is in his final year studying music at Christ Church College, Oxford.

The concerto is (a) highly impassioned piece with some furiously fast and complex piano notes which William performed with gusto to a professional standard. This was recognised by the audience too, who have him quite an ovation at the end of the piece. This reviewer’s arms were certainly tired by the end of it.

The performance was only William’s second with the orchestra, with which he played Rachmaninov’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” in May 2011. Fittingly, Rachmaninov is one of William’s most loved musicians and he clearly derived much pleasure from playing his composition on the night. Speaking after the concert, he said: “It was very close to my heart. Rachmaninov’s compositions are so romantic but, at the same time, so rigorous. It has a very complex structure and, in the context of the piece, it’s so powerful. It’s very emotional.”

As for the audience’s enjoyment: “I was very touched by the applause. they were pleased and so was I.”

See the pictures accompanying this article in Mosaic Magazine, Issue 71, www.mosaicmagazine.co.uk

Chabrier – Espana

Debussy – Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune

Bizet – L’Arlesienne Suite No 2

Poulenc – Ballet Suite, Les Biches

Saint-Saens – Symphony No 3 (Organ Symphony)      Soloist: Joseph Cullen

Conductor: Nicholas Smith

Leader: Mary Barber

Concert Venue:  Huddersfield Town Hall

Start Time: 7.30pm prompt

Tickets available on-line from the Kirklees Box Office. From £12.00, concessions available.

Wagner:          Overture, The Flying Dutchman

Wagner:         Prelude and Liebestod, Tristan and Isolde        Soloist: Cressida Sharp

Bruckner:      Symphony No 7, with a feature quartet of Wagner tubas.

Conductor:  Nicholas Smith

Leader:  Mary Barber

Concert Venue:  Huddersfield Town Hall

Start Time: 7.30pm prompt

Tickets available on-line from the Kirklees Box Office. From £12.00, concessions available.

9th February 2013 concert flyer