Reviews

I have had occasion to praise the work of the 'pro/am' orchestras before, and I am very glad to be able to do so again. The St Giles Orchestra in Oxford has a really valuable asset in its conductor Geoffrey Bushell. Not only does he (with the Orchestra's approval) include an interesting but unplayed, but sometimes quite unknown, work in virtually every concert – for example both its two previous concerts included concertos by Max Bruch! – but he also has a real gift for getting the players 'inside' the music, and to understand what any particular piece of Elgar or Delius, for example, or a part of a piece, is 'about'.

The main difficulty which affects virtually every pro/am orchestra is tuning – and if the tuning-up before the music begins is not really accurate, all sorts of curious sounds will emerge along the way. Regrettably that was the case at this concert, but it was nevertheless an extremely enjoyable one, because everyone was going in the right direction. The other 'down' was a couple of those unfortunate spells of 'collective panic' that sometimes strike pro/am performances; happily, however, they righted themselves quite quickly.

In many ways, the collossal first and last sections of Elgar's In the South are the most extrovert music that Elgar ever wrote – and there was real excitement and a sense of forward movement in the surging opening tune that goes up three octaves. The wistfulness of the first quiet section was well caught, the big 'Rome' bit was suitably imposing, and in the calm centre section, the viola solo was sensitively played – the moonlight on the sea, the warmth of an Italian night and the gently rocking boats beautifully evoked. Then the sense of excitement and urgency returned, and the elan of the final pages, crescendoing upwards and upwards, was authentic Elgar playing. The acoustics of the church, however, made it difficult for the brief pauses and the off-beat entries to tell as they would in a good hall.

In Brigg Fair, the hazy opening and the theme (taken a little more slowly than usual) were lovely, the latter sounding very much as Joseph Taylor might have sung it. The Lento variation in the middle was excellent – well balanced, with some sweet violin tone, and a well-played horn solo; the 'march' variation was not actually very solemn, or as maestoso as it could have been – and as the music quickened up towards the big climax, the prominent violin accompaniment to the tune (which then gets taken over by the clarinet) did lack that rhapsodic Delian feel. The flow of one variation into the next was, however, very well managed, and there was never any feeling of mentally stopping to adjust to the new tempo and atmosphere. The acoustics, again, did not help, and quite a number of prominent inner parts failed to come through the texture – but that was not, of course, the fault of the conductor or orchestra. To sum up – it may not have been echt-Delius, but it was nevertheless very enterprising programming, and they made a very good shot at it.

The final work in the concert was the Dvorak Cello Concerto, with William Bass as the soloist. He was very good in the quiet music – a warm, sweet tone, and both the famous second subject of the first movement (initially played by the first horn) and the end of the whole work were beautiful; in the extrovert parts, however, he was less convincing.

Throughout the concert, the Orchestra – who are all amateurs or music teachers in local schools – obviously enjoyed themselves, and that certainly communicated itself to the quite sizeable audience.

Martin Leigh-Browne, CBE
Editor, The Delius Society Journal, Issue 144
The Delius Society

As we have said before, how lucky the more serious-minded musical public are that there are pro/am local orchestras all over the country who are prepared to perform really out-of-the-way works by British composers written in the period between about 1885 and the late 1930s. The St Giles Orchestra in Oxford is one of them, and – 65 strong, with an audience of well over 100 – they opened this concert at the extremely fine Victorian church of St Andrews in Summertown with Delius's very rarely played Lebenstanz. It is difficult to see why that should be so, for it is only 12 minuutes long, brimming with boisterous energy very much like the last big climax before the end of Brigg Fair (both are, of course, in triple rhythm), the dynamics ranging from lots of fffs to pppp. It is, though, a very difficult piece for an orchestra such as this with which to begin a concert, for the players simply haven't yet 'warmed-up' and got rid of their understandable 'before it's got going' nerves. There are lots of very fast notes for everyone – in particular, for instruments that don't generally play that sort of thing, the contra bassoon, horns and trumpets – and it has to be said that the general ensemble and tuning, both here and throughout the concert were dubious. On the plus side, however, there was not only patent overall enthusiasm for everything they played, but also what seemed to be a genuine feeling for the Delian idiom. The audience will certainly have learned that all Delius is not slow and languorous!

Perhaps not surprisingly, that was truer of the very undemonstrative conductor, Geoffrey Bushell. He brought out the completely characteristics of, on the one hand, the con vigore of the beginning and the other fast music, and on the other the lento and tranquillo sections into which the former sinks, whose ebb and flow he caught nicely. Although the repertoire is based on suggestions from members of the Orchestra, they are clearly given a strong 'steer' by Mr Bushell – as witness the fact that the second item in this concert was a very Russian-sounding piece, The Cedar and the Palm by Vassily Kallinikova, a contemporary of Scriabin; the next concert, on 21 June will include the first UK amateur performance of Frank Bridge's Isabella; and Brigg Fair is to be played in 2008.

There were also included an attractive, gently rhapsodic piece by Geoffrey Bushell, the Finale of Swan lake, and an affectionate, if sometimes scrappily played, Enigma Variations. Here Elgar's skills as an orchestrator really helped the players achieve a very respectable balance in many places – and, as always, the organ added that almost indefinable something to the (for this listener really quite moving) last 99 bars. All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and long may the orchestra continue its adventurous programming!

Martin Leigh-Browne, CBE
Editor, The Delius Society Journal, Issue 141
The Delius Society