'A Musical Tour Round the British Isles ' : Todmorden Orchestra,  Nicholas Concannon Hodges (conductor)  Town Hall, Todmorden, UK  23 .6. 2007 (RB)

 

Saturday’s successful Town Hall concert ‘A Musical Tour Round the British Isles’ by the Todmorden Orchestra was well attended. The fifty-strong orchestra conducted by Nicholas Hodges laid on an unhackneyed mix that discarded the usual overture-concerto-symphony format. Unhackneyed it may have been but there was room in this all-British concert for the familiar even if some of that element had already become nostalgic.

Celebration and even patriotism was in the air with the hall decked in the flags of the four countries. The Union Flag was draped across the back of the conductor’s stand in ‘Last Night of the Proms’ style.

We started in Scotland with a non-Brit’s evocation of Scotland: Mendelssohn’s overture ‘The Hebrides’. It’s a well known piece. Although Mendelssohn was a German adored in the UK from Victorian times onwards. His ‘Elijah’ and ‘St Paul’ form cornerstones of the still vigorous English Choral tradition. Mendelssohn had a thing for Scotland. There is further evidence of this in his Third Symphony ‘The Scottish’ which like the overture was also inspired by his Scottish holiday in 1829. Apart from the odd queasy patch this was a fine performance with a quick pulse and gracious contributions from the flute and clarinet benches.

After Mendelssohn’s early romantic tone poem there came a brutal change of gear. John Reeman’s ‘Beside the Sea’ was introduced disarmingly by the composer with illustrations played by the orchestra; a good idea this, especially with the unfamiliar. With a title like that you might have been expecting something from the tonal heartland of British light music. In fact the music while evoking Blackpool and echoes of a distant brass band and of ‘I Do Love To Be Beside the Seaside’ did so through a dissonant glass darkly. Rather like Ted Hughes’ take on the British beach holiday it picks up on the gritty, seamy and even violent aspects of the place, gleaming wet pavements mirror the neon; it’s as if Raymond Chandler’s mean streets were uprooted from California to the North-West. Even the sea-swell imagery has a baleful oleaginous consistency and that familiar seaside tune bumps up against a fragment of the ‘Dies Irae’. It is a vividly fascinating piece which starts with the sort of thrusting eruptive gesture that opens Sibelius’s ‘Night Ride and Sunrise’. Reeman is the orchestra’s composer-in-residence. His Sinfonia was premiered by them in 2005.

It’s good to hear some Alun Hoddinott, a composer with ten grittily dissonant symphonies to his name. Here however we have the more accessible Hoddinott. In two of his lilting Welsh Dances he is closer to the late Sir Malcolm Arnold than to the other composer he greatly admired, Haslingden-born, Alan Rawsthorne.  In the first and gentler of the two there was again some lovely work from the flute and clarinet principals and in the rumbustious second dance the emphatically pointed playing of the first trumpet registered strongly.

Before the interval came the idealised pastoral meditation that is Vaughan Williams' ‘Lark Ascending’ with its ethereal solo violin making a still and tranquil centre to the concert. Written before the Great War it has become the soundtrack to the greener British countryside. The starkly exposed solo is fundamental with quiet playing and nuanced shading being essential. Martyn Jackson now aged 19 and a student at the Royal College of Music joined the Todmorden Orchestra six years ago. It must be tough coming back to play as soloist for an orchestra in which you were a ‘rank and file’ player. Martyn handsomely met the subtle demands of this moving piece with the seamless legato and vibrant projection essential to this hushed and almost mystical meditation. I hope that he will be back again as a soloist in future concerts. How about the Miaskovsky concerto?

After the interval we returned to Scotland with Hamish MacCunn’s ‘The Land of the Mountain and the Flood’ – once used as the signature tune for the TV series ‘Sutherland’s Law’.  There were one or two rough patches in the playing but nothing to detract from the essence of this piece which was well put across. Its noble tune was nicely contrasted with the more warlike aspects of this miniature tone poem and the redemptive work of the brass in the final pages set the seal on a confident performance.

One of the rarest pieces here was by Hamilton Harty. He might well be recalled as one of Sir John Barbirolli’s predecessors with the Hallé. In fact Harty was a composer of music in a very romantic style as well as being a conductor. The ‘Fantasy - In Ireland’ has solo parts for the very Celtic combination of flute with harp; the latter played by Adrian Guy. The large orchestra is used with great delicacy including a memorable duet between tam-tam and flute. It received a magically atmospheric performance with memorable playing from Lynda Robertson (flute).

Lawrence Killian is first trumpet with the orchestra. His ‘The Three Lands’ is a sizeable and uproariously eclectic shindig of a piece. He even drops in more than a few pages of the Mendelssohn overture alongside good-natured and humorous references to traditional tunes from Scotland, Wales and Ireland and to Holst’s Planets. The orchestra revelled in this kaleidoscopic storm.

The name of Eric Coates is likely to be well known as one of the Princes of British light music played during its heyday by resort orchestras the length of the country. Since the 1980s it has enjoyed a bit of a revival. Coates’ three-part ‘London Everyday’ was written 75 years ago and the Todmorden delivered a bustling performance which was not short of poetry.

Coates was known for his marches as well as his sleepy lagoons. Elgar also wrote marches and in this his 150^th anniversary year the conductor chose ‘Pomp and Circumstance No. 4’ to end the concert. It’s an unhackneyed choice – typically noble music but with a tragic aspect too. Perhaps next year the orchestra will do Elgar’s newly reconstructed No. 6?

I see that the orchestra are including Kodály’s ‘Háry János’ suite in their concert on 15 March 2008. I do hope that they will be including the important part for cimbalom. Given their commitment to authenticity and fresh programming I suspect that they will.

 

Rob Barnett