The North Downs Sinfonia Spring Concert - Village Hall Saturday 12 May
I have listened to music in great concert halls and in the comfort of my own home but there is something very special about a live performance in a more intimate space such as our Village Hall. I cannot say if it is the closeness of it all, or the fact that you are actually listening to music being played by friends, or is it also that special something you get from being there with your own village folk. It was almost certainly all of these things that made this Spring Concert a very enjoyable experience.
I was looking forward to hearing some old favourites like the Mozart Overture: La Clemenza di Tito; the Rossini Barber of Seville and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, The `Italian’, but what caught my eye in the programme was the Mahler Kindertotenlieder or Songs on the Death of Children. I know the title sounds very sad and tragic but this is beautiful music that takes me back to my early years when my father would play an old recording on an awful `record player’; I wondered too just how it would sound and what the audience would make of it.
Francis Griffin, our conductor for the evening, got us off to a good start with the Mozart to settle us down and whet our appetite for what was to come. The excellent programme notes tells us that Mozart was once again hard up, another child on the way, so he got to work and produced the entire opera in 18 days!
After enthusiastic applause our own Jonathan Maynard stepped up with David Preston to play the Concerto for Two Flutes by Domenico Cimarosa, a prodigious and popular composer in his day, surely now overdue for a return to the top. The two soloists quickly settled to the task and the sound was excellent in a hall not regarded as being acoustically ideal! They kept together well and the rest of the orchestra seemed inspired by their excellent playing.
Mahler’s life was touched with tragedy with the loss of his brother when he was only fourteen. The poet Freidrich Ruckert also knew tragedy with the death of some of his children, losing his youngest and only daughter and second son within sixteen days. In his grief Ruckert wrote over four hundred poems, his Kindertotenlieder. This music is full of sadness but it also has within it the joy of children and the love of parents. It was never going to be the easiest music to perform requiring great control of voice and instruments to capture the essence of the music. The orchestra introduced us to the wonderful young mezzo soprano Nina Alupii-Morton and she began. Accompanied by French Horns, woodwind, strings and harp, which together captured that special Mahler sound; Nina sang beautifully, so much so that at the end there was a silence as we all reflected on what we had just heard, and then such applause! Such beautiful music makes you reflect on loved ones now lost and I was not alone as I shed a tear or two but that is what great music should do for us.
Having listened with wrapt attention to Nina singing the Mahler did not prepare us for the amazing soaring quality of her voice as she now sang `Una voce poco fa’ from the Barber of Seville! Her power, range and pure sound were demonstrated again and again until we found ourselves shouting our appreciation.
The evening finished with a memorable performance of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 played with great enthusiasm by the orchestra, a perfect end to a well balanced programme of surprises and old favourites.
Congratulations to everyone involved, now get on with planning the next concert please!!!
Jon Allbutt.