CityLife

Chester Festival Concerts

By Robert Beale

Chester Festival Concerts
Chester Cathedral
July 14, 2010

It must have seemed a great idea on paper – to have the European Union Chamber Orchestra do Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, with Nicola Benedetti as soloist, and to get former poet laureate Andrew Motion to write a new sonnet for each season, and appear in person with them.

It certainly looked to be one of the highlights of this year’s Chester Summer Music Festival. And even though the big idea didn’t produce anything really memorable, it was still an enjoyable evening’s music.

That was mainly on account of the first half of the programme, in which the EUCO, led by Hans Peter Hoffman, played Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir De Florence. He did his job impeccably: in its small-orchestra version the music needs to be taken by the scruff of the neck every now and then, and he brought real energy to it as well as letting the six-part textures glow and the melodies soar. Only in the finale’s fugal passage did there seem, briefly, to be problems.

Vivaldi’s concertos are so familiar that they do need something special to lift a performance. But Andrew Motion’s regretful farewells to his former garden were somewhat tangential to music that is all about activity (and, to be fair, weather).

It sounded routine, despite Nicola Benedetti’s best efforts. She (and the EUCO) did not go for a ‘period’ sound throughout, though it was better, for instance in the second Summer movement, when they did.

But with Bartok-style pizzicatos in the third movement of Autumn, and back-to-warm-Romantic-glow in the Winter fireside slow movement, there was a curious variety of approaches.

The festival’s grand finale on Wednesday was a choral concert, as usual, with French music its theme. The Festival Chorus – trained by Frances Cooke – sang Chabrier’s Ode A La Musique and Poulenc’s Gloria, with Emma Tring their soprano soloist.

David Hill conducted the performance, with the Orchestra of Opera North, and the choral sound was rich in tone and well varied. The Chabrier’s amiable harmonies showed off the female voices well, and Emma Tring dominated the thicker textures effortlessly. The Poulenc is a fun piece and was sung with enthusiasm and considerable impact, David Hill maintaining impetus even in the more thoughtful moments and drawing out a splendid tutti to match the soaring solo line and the warm blend of the full chorus.

The cathedral organ and its organist, Philip Rushforth, were the stars of the second part, in Poulenc’s organ symphony. The orchestra did themselves great credit here, under David Hill’s direction, with a deal more passion than is often the case in the first movement, and clarity and life overcoming the cathedral acoustic.

The ecclesiastical tones of the cathedral organ contributed subtly to the effect of the slow movement, and although its impact at full power was not as great as a big French-style instrument might be expected to make, the finale actually benefitted from the chance it gave for the orchestra’s role to be fully heard.

Reviewed: Thu, 15 July, 2010

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