STARGAZER - CAMBRIDGE PHILHARMONIC
Cambridge Philharmonic began its new season with a bang and a whimper. This extraordinary band defies any comparison to what might be called an ‘amateur’ orchestra. Under their regular conductor Timothy Redmond, the Phil was in beefy form with a challenging programme that might have tested the world’s best. The opening work, ‘The Chairman Dances’ was John Adams’ orchestral outtake from his opera ‘Nixon in China’. From the very start, Adams’ minimalist driving rhythms built layers of sound upon sound. It is a challenge for any orchestra to keep to the complex timings. It was also a huge challenge to keep one’s feet from tapping out the insistent beat. The Phil seemed to be enjoying the work as much as the audience (disappointingly small though it was). It is a showcase for every section of the band and they were more than up to the challenge. Waltzes, foxtrot and jazzy rhythms keep ringing the changes on this fascinating piece which certainly won over this reviewer.
The conductor from the podium introduced the next piece – a very unfamiliar short work by Prokofiev. ‘Autumnal Sketch’ is a rarely played early work but despite Redmond’s enthusiasm for the piece, it is hard to see it becoming re-established in the repertoire. True there is a rather lovely grand sweeping theme but for the most part the sketch remained a little too sketchy for my taste.
Gears were shifted upward with the next work, Jonathan Dove’s ‘Stargazer’ written just twenty years ago. This is an astonishingly gripping work scored for huge orchestra and solo trombone. The soloist Peter Moore was like a musical alchemist turning his brass to pure gold. He is a player of astonishing skill and teases sounds out of the instrument that show it to be unexpectedly versatile swaying from sassy swing, rollicking hunting chases to haunting inter-galactic siren calls and rude raspberries. Dove’s six-movement work is a stellar version of Holst’s ‘The Planets’: eerie, celestial and magnificent in turn. As soon as the last note was played, I wanted to hear it again.
The final work in the concert was Prokofiev’s huge fifth symphony. This has long been one of my favourite works. Written as the Second World War drew to its savage close, the Russian composer’s monumental paean to the triumph of his country’s struggle against Nazism, is infused with earworm themes, massive (and super loud) climaxes, and genuinely jaunty tunes where joy turns to agonising pain. The Phil’s supercharged percussion and brass sections almost blew off the roof of the West Road Concert Hall and although there were some rather muddy textures in the slow movement, this was a breathless, exciting and exhausting reading of Prokofiev’s symphony full as it was of very loud bangs and soft, sad whimpers.
