NORTHERN VISIONS

Review of March 2025 Concert

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The opening concert in St Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra’s 2025 Subscription season was a tour de force, with two major works – Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No 5 in D major, and the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor. The orchestra’s Musical Director, Michael Joel was at his usual supportive best and the players responded with total commitment. Concertmaster for this concert was Archie Lamont-Bowden.

 

The church was full and there was a keenly warm mood in the audience. Vaughan Williams had great respect for the music of Sibelius and dedicated this symphony to him. Vaughan Williams wrote the work between 1938 and late 1942. It is quite different from the discordant and strident Fourth Symphony of 1935. The orchestration is lighter with no harps, only two horns, no tuba and no percussion except timpani. In the first movement the violins use the notes of the pentatonic scale, and the horn call fluctuates between major and minor keys, also hinting at tonal ambiguity. The strings were fully equal to the changes of tonality and in the second movement (Scherzo) woodwinds and brass charmed with lively playing. The Romanza featured a charming Cor Anglais solo and rich string playing. The haunting theme based on elements of his incomplete opera, The Pilgrim’s Progress, was the spiritual core of the movement. Lower brass and strings shared a series of questions and answers. The violin solo, played beautifully by Archie Lamont-Bowden, led into a more positive key. The final movement, Passacaglia, maintained this positivity. Its triumphant theme was reminiscent of celebratory bells, with questions and answers again – all played with confidence. A work of nobility and dignity.

 

Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D minor, Op.47 is a virtuosic work, and its technical challenges were well met by Andrew Beer. Known to many in the audience as the Concertmaster of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Beer admitted later that this was the first time he had performed the work publicly. Nobody would have picked that. It was an inspired performance –impeccable intonation, brilliant double-stopping, harmonics generated an ethereal and brooding atmosphere. The violinist and orchestra often played in alternating themes; the dark colours of the Scandinavian temperament created haunting and heroic passages. The orchestra was as supportive as usual. The solo clarinet theme in the opening of the first movement following the soloist’s first entry was magical. Praise must be paid to the whole orchestra, with special mention of the quite ominous and stormy impact of the brass and timpani in the first movement, and the lower strings in the opening of the third movement. Beer thoroughly deserved the standing ovation for his quite riveting performance of one of the most difficult violin concertos in the repertoire and the orchestra for their inspired playing throughout.

 

Review by Rogan Falla