Lakeland Sinfonia, Westmorland Hall, Kendal
The Lakeland Sinfonia, directed by Phillip Ellis, entertained its faithful admirers with performances that mirrored their amelioration over recent seasons.
Mozart’s music always presents formidable challenges. It sounds straightforward but its open, clean-cut harmonies and captivating melodies require every detail - notes, nuances – to be finely proffered. His The Magic Flute overture has such demands and, whilst there was occasional sparkle on show, this was a rather monochromatic reading with some orchestral sections not yet at their best.
Elgar’s Serenade for Strings (almost inaudibly introduced by Phillip Ellis) witnessed some lovely tonal blend, phrasing and internal interplay between the parts but, again, rather more intensity, bite and precision would ideally have been on offer, especially in the climaxes.
David Pyatt, famed worldwide, graced the occasion with a memorable portrayal of R Strauss’s 1st Horn Concerto. Supremely assured, beautifully shaped and, at times, exhilaratingly paced, this was a performance that needed the Sinfonia to be in top form; it was!
Vaughan Williams’s 5th Symphony has umpteen challenges (not Mozartian!) but the Sinfonia, now more confident, surmounted many of them, with the woodwind, horn and brass principals often excelling.
Brian Paynes
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