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Leamington Sinfonia, ‘Summer Blockbuster’, All Saints’ Church, Saturday, 29 June 2024.

  • clivepeacock0
  • Jul 3, 2024
  • 2 min read

Leamington Sinfonia’s Saturday evening ‘summer blockbuster’ began a ‘blockbuster weekend’ for many concert supporters in Leamington and surrounding towns. Their animated, and at times, rapturous, performance of Dmitri Shotakovich’s Symphony No 11 was brilliantly led by Conductor, Joe Davis, adopting one of his most high-spirited approaches, so high spirited, that at a crucial moment in the last movement his left arm removed the score on the music stand shared by leader Edward Boothroyd and Aoife Dudley.  Many in the orchestra excelled themselves, notably Emma Williams with her cor anglais playing and Noah Blythe, a first-year student from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, playing both his E flat and B flat trumpets. The ‘Year of 1905’ symphony, reflecting the Bloody Sunday atrocities at St Petersburg Winter Palace,  played without a pause, was a triumph, all players deserving much credit for so capably dealing with such a complicated work of so many levels, so many emotions and states of mind; in effect an ‘ode to revolution’ which happened in 1917.

 

With thumping tubular bells, dynamic timpani and snare drum playing,  piercing piccolos, vast and confident bassoon and brass contributions, there was a great deal of noise from the rear ranks of this orchestra. Throughout this, the string sections worked so very hard to keep up the pace and intensity Joe Davis demanded.  It was exhausting to watch and, no doubt, very exhausting to be part of such a worthy effort!

 

The evening began with much less noise with Sinfonia’s Patron, Howard Skempton’s Prelude for Orchestra, a work from 1999,  which illustrates one of Skempton’s major strengths, his ability to demonstrate a veneer of simplicity which reflects the austerity of composers whom he admires, including Webern.  Like Lento, this work, too, will grow on the critics in time and become a Radio 3 favourite.  Patron, Skempton supported the commission of Henry Page’s Vespula Cartouche, the anecdote of the wasp and the cartouche - a symbol representing good luck and protection from evil.  Page intoduced his work elegantly, a piece full of knotty bits depicted by fluttering strings, harp and gentle wind

 
 
 

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