LONDON MOZART PLAYERS

LONDON MOZART PLAYERS

M&G Concert at the Civic Theatre

26.10.2014

The first of this season's Civic Concerts featured two works inspired by the seasons.

First, Piazzolla's Cuatro Estanciones Porteñas – four contrasting Tango-flavoured movements depicting the seasons in Buenos Aires. Originally a piano work, this version, by Leonid Desyatnikov, brings it closer to Vivaldi, in a virtuosic violin concert. Brilliantly played by the LMP and Tasmin Little, with a lovely cantabile cello theme for Autumn from Sebastian Comberti.

Roxanna Panufnik's World Seasons borrows ideas and idioms from various musical cultures, without ever imitating. Autumn in Albania is a punchy, rhythmic dance movement, with a poignant love song following the cadenza. Tibetan Winter, complete with singing bowl [Comberti again], is hauntingly ethereal, and Indian Summer is sultry, smoky with a blazingly intense finale, redolent of the Holi Festival of Colours.

These two alternative almanachs were bookended by familiar favourites for string orchestra: Tchaikowsky's lively, lilting Serenade, directed from the leader's chair by Tasmin Little, relishing the rich sonorities of the writing, and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, with leader Simon Blendis directing. Hard to bring anything fresh to the Mozart, you might think, but this was an enjoyably crisp, brisk reading, enhanced by the clear acoustic of the Civic Theatre.

LONDON MOZART PLAYERS

M&G CIVIC CONCERT

London Mozart Players at the Civic Theatre

18.11.12

A very popular concert to start the season, with a programme of favourites and one of this country's finest pianists at the helm.

Directing from the Japanese piano, Howard Shelley gave a bright, lively performance of the familiar Grieg concerto. As he points out, it's easier to keep this repertoire fresh if you're conducting as well as playing, and there was certainly no hint of staleness here: an imposing opening, followed by a jaunty development and a very rich cadenza. The instrumental introduction to the Adagio was played with a beautifully blended orchestral palette, the piano entry finely judged.

Before the Grieg we heard Mozart's Don Giovanni Overture, performed with very positive attack and dramatic urgency. And after it, the celebratory euphoria of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Pleasing to hear the various voices so distinctly; the playful Vivace followed by an energetic Allegretto, with a thrillingly muscular Allegro con Brio to finish.

A bonus was the informative, and witty, pre-concert talk, including Spohr's reminiscence of playing the Symphony under Beethoven's baton, and Mozart writing his overture the night before the performance, kept going by pots of ale and the gossip of friends.

The next concert, in February, features Sinfonia Viva in Schubert, Haydn and Mozart.

LONDON MOZART PLAYERS

Jim Hutchon was at the Civic Theatre

18^th April 2010

M&G’s latest concert of the season at the Civic brought us the London Mozart Players, under conductor Owain Arwel Hughes, playing a pair of Beethoven numbers sandwiching Haydn’s Cello Concerto.

The opening overture, Egmont, brought out the LMP’s customary superb balance and lyric qualities in a spirited rendition of the1809 overture, conceived while Beethoven was hiding in a friend’s cellar bombarded by shells during the brief French occupation of Vienna, hence the war-like tone of much of the early movement. The allegro is marked by intense energy among the strings – echoed by a resounding brass. This energy is intensified in the closing con brio which brings the piece to a triumphant, victorious close.

The soloist in the Cello Concerto was Thomas Carroll, who took the piece by storm from the opening bars. Despite its complexity in the first movement, Carroll’s technical virtuosity was matched with real understanding of the music, especially in a dark, understated but technically brilliant short cadenza. The slow movement was a master class in the lyrical qualities of the cello, much of it in the instrument’s higher register. The third movement was a blaze of colour and sound from the soloist matched by a bravura performance by the whole orchestra.

The closing piece was Beethoven’s 3^rd Symphony, originally dedicated to Napoleon but changed by the composer to ‘Eroica’ after a change of heart. The opening allegro con brio is a fiendishly complicated but musically satisfying and with great flourishes by the strings and especially the horns. But it also has an almost rural, pastoral section in it. The Marcia Funebre was suitably restrained with an underlying sense of drive and feeling, and is, in many ways, the defining movement of the whole Symphony. The Scherzo was a triumph of power and energy – again with a strident call to arms by the horns, three of which have solos of their own, and the allegro is a drive to express Beethoven’s heroic vision in mankind.

Over the years, these concerts have made Chelmsford an acclaimed centre of classical music, and the nearly full house for this one was testament to an audience which had come from far and wide for the privilege.