Leamington Chamber Orchestra, Summer Concert, Holy Trinity Church, Beauchamp, Sunday 30 June, 2024

After the successful but exhausting Leamington Sinfonia Blockbuster of Saturday night, local musicians demonstrated incredible stamina again on Sunday afternoon with Leamington Chamber tackling Kurt Weill’s Symphony No 2 and the demanding Sibelius Symphony No 5 with its quite remarkable closing chords. Full marks to those string players who made this second significant musical event of the weekend in Leamington!  Sarah Naylor returned, too, to provide more piercing piccolo playing.  Rebecca Grier and Martin Eyles put in another shift with the French horn quartet.

Chamber’s leader, Lesley Mills’ confidence grows in this role with every concert. Puccini’s Preludio Sinfonico opens with a simply delicious wind section effort, soon to be joined by Mills and the hard-working string sections.  Building to a fine climax led by the brass, supported by Iris Van den Bos and her agile timpani playing, the work ends with two delicately plucked string notes.

Kurt Weill’s work is frequently associated with opera performances in warehouses in east London, notably The Threepenny Opera he composed in association with Bertolt Brecht. His second symphony composed a few years after his opera success was completed having fled from Nazi Germany where he suffered as a Jewish composer. Peter Wain’s distinguished trumpet playing led the fine brass contributions in the second movement, the largo, with Andrew Makereth’s outstanding trombone playing added to the beauty of the movement. Both oboeists, Duncan Speirs and Caroline Brookes, enjoy a very prominent role in the final allegro-presto during which the Wain trumpet tune is reworked before ending with a riotous romp.

Sibelius towers above all Scandinavian composers; his fifth symphony composed during WW1 before revisions in 1916 and 1919 is a magnificentt work full of incredible climaxes and long periods of reflection with many bars of fluttering strings. Swelling waves of brass themes lead to a cacophonous sonic blur before ending with six searching musical thunderbolts.  What a climax, followed by well-deserved applause.