Review: Hallé Orchestra at Warwick Arts Centre
Four bassoons dominate the opening movement, with crisp intelligent playing, supported by excellent horns, the ever-enthusiastic Sir Mark Elder leading an orchestra with a gender balance seldom equalled by other UK based orchestras. Four of six double bass players are female, the percussion and trombone sections are female, and females dominate the flutes and the oboes. What a strong message this sends to other orchestras as to what can be achieved if there is a real commitment.
The five movements are the output of an eccentric, hugely imaginative composer; the second movement introduces two female harpists to accompany a gorgeous clarinet solo before the delicate pizzicato playing of second violins accompanies a cor anglais-oboe conversation. Blaring horns dominate the fourth movement before the delicate col legno playing by the first violins reintroduces those wonderful bassoons in the fifth movement. A remarkable performance, full of the instrumentation colouring Berlioz demanded.
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Hide AdThis excitement was preceded by Stephen Hough’s supremely confident playing of Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No 5 in F major. Delightfully lyrical, expressive, expansive at times and providing evidence of erotica, Hough clearly enjoyed sharing his admiration of this composer, with a receptive audience making his playing even better! For his encore he surprised this enthusiastic audience with Eric Coates’, By the Sleeping Lagoon, more familiarly heard as the music accompanying the shipping forecast!