Concert review: Northern Chamber Orchestra @ Westmorland Hall, Kendal (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Concert review: Northern Chamber Orchestra @ Westmorland Hall, Kendal

11:30am Saturday 30th January 2010

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THE elegantly-attired Northern Chamber Orchestra, recent guests of the Lakeland Sinfonia Concert Society, opened its Westmorland Hall concert with a satisfying performance of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture that was remarkable for a profusion of detail, quality of ensemble and rhythmic vitality.

Perhaps, though, the rich scoring of the loud tutti passages demanded a greater intensity of upper string tone than was possible on this occasion.

Well suited to the orchestra’s forces were Delius’s Two Pieces for Small Orchestra. Atmospheric and pastoral these examples of quintessential Englishness were lovingly presented.

So, too, were Sibelius’s rarely-heard Two Humoresques for Violin and Orchestra in which the orchestra’s director, Nicholas Ward, was in fine form in the role of soloist.

Angela Whelan, soloist in Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, experienced varying fortunes; bright tone, crisp, neat passage work, sensitive phrasing and a fine sense of line were her norm but occasionally she was not, perhaps, as accurate as she would have liked.

The orchestra, at its most beguiling in Schubert’s Symphony No 3, gave us playing of character, melodic charm, rhythmic verve, effective ensemble and lovely solo wind performances.

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