Hampstead and Highgate Festival Orchestra
St John-at-Hampstead
IT flares into existence just once a year, blazing briefly through St John-at-Hampstead like a musical comet. But where does the Hampstead and Highgate Festival Orchestra come from? Whatever their origins, the players use their short time here to great effect.
All their strengths were shown off in their opening Haydn’s Mercury Symphony: a sleek-toned and unified string section that was almost matched in volume by oboists Ruth Bolister and Ilid Jones, who raised their heads above the musical parapet every now and then with an especially well-turned phrase.
If George Vass took things a little too brashly in the menuetto, he more than compensated for it an idiosyncratic adagio that lulled gently by.
Two short extracts from William Walton’s score for the Laurence Olivier’s Henry V were an unfamiliar treat, and both these sad wisps of music were filled with understated pathos.
Harpist Suzanne Willison, the night’s first soloist, reinvigorated the orchestra with her bright and supple playing in Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane. There was plenty of momentum here as an increasingly bulbous sound from the violins pushed nicely against her skittering harp strings until everything popped to a silly close.
The first bit of David Matthews’ Aubade is built out of melodies culled from different bird songs heard on his travels. It’s certainly the gloomiest dawn chorus I ever heard, although no less likeable for that. It perked up for a jolly syncopated second half. The brilliant violinist György Pauk stole Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, leaving violist Yuko Inoue looking a little empty-handed who didn’t quite match Pauk’s liquidity.