CAMBRIDGE PHILHARMONIC
It’s all about friendship. These were the stirring words of Timothy Redmond, the charismatic conductor of the Cambridge Philharmonic. The maestro relishes his orations to the audience, a near full house at the West Road Concert Hall. A huge round of applause burst forth as he told us that this was the first time the Phil had performed since March 2020. He and his performers were loving being back and their friends, their good friends the audience, concurred.
The first half featured the Phil’s huge chorus accompanied only by Dawn Hardwick on piano. Those of us itching to hear this great orchestra had to wait a tad longer. The opener was ‘Six Moravian Choruses’ by Janacek after Dvorak. The two Czech mates collaborated on these pretty and melodic pieces on the folky theme of love and lost love. I had the feeling that some cobwebs still needed a bit of sweeping for though nicely sung, the huge ensemble (Covidly spaced) sounded a bit under par. Things improved with the second work, ‘Songs of Farewell’ by Sir Hubert Parry. This melancholic work was one of the last by the English composer. The old professor was devastated by the loss of young musicians sent to the trenches in the Great War. Poems set to music by Parry evoke a lost world, a pastoral landscape disappearing under the savagery of modern warfare. I enjoyed the lush harmonies and gorgeously sonorous chords but I thought the choice of piece was a bit odd; was this happy evening a time for elegiac nostalgia? Well, yes, maybe.
Happily such quandaries were quashed after the interval. Our conductor came bounding on stage with a very full orchestra behind him and told us a lot of fascinating facts about composers Coleridge Taylor and Dvorak. But then the words were over and Redmond like a greyhound out of a trap raised his baton and the aural ravishing began. Coleridge Taylor’s ‘Ballade in A minor’ is the perfect showpiece for a great orchestra. And the Phil was well up to the task. From first note to the end, the Ballade is pure excitement packed with big Harry Potterish themes (over a hundred years before its time), endless invention and powerhouse orchestration. The Phil has never sounded better. They were back and the sense of joyous thrill was palpable.
The programme came to a triumphant end with Dvorak’s magnificent 9th Symphony, ‘From the New World’. What I love about this band is its strength in every musical department and each was on show in this great masterwork. Though Redmond earlier had joked about the famous ‘Hovis’ theme not earning a crust for the composer, its echoes of an African American spiritual sinuously played on the cor anglais and picked up by the strings, still has the power to move one to tears. The horns and trumpets fanfaring the spinetingling theme of the final movement were in the finest form and every section played its part in creating a breathtaking experience. As themes noble, homespun, dramatic and grandiose repeated and shunted over each other, the Phil and its bouncy conductor brought this evergreen symphony to a triumphant close.
