CAMBRIDGE PHILHARMONIC AT WEST ROAD
Cambridge Philharmonic
In this time of anxiety , of war and worry, it must be hard for a major orchestra to celebrate and consolidate at once. Despair is a real temptation.
Music as ever is the not so much the resolution but the balm for out-of-control gloom. Whoever engineered Saturday night’s concert menu must have prayed over it. Cambridge Philharmonic in Spring- time mode became a wonderful healing experience.
A full- throated choir of singers led us through a glorious wilderness of sound, from the beautiful tones of Libby Larsen and Alaska Spring to Jonathan Dove’s The Passing of the Year. Part of a packed–to-the gunnels audience, we heard an ensemble of singers surely nationally outstanding in their harmonic sensibility and well directed tone. Timothy Redmond excelled as Conductor in this bitter-sweet mélange. Tom Sexton’s poems re-imagine the ravens, bears, snowy owls and humming birds of his native Alaska and as Libby Larson herself writes of those she chose to interpret ‘Their message is of hope and persistence in the midst of adversity”. As the choral voice soared to a spine tingling climax in the line ‘I have fallen in love with the world’ there was an earthy but thrillingly other -worldy quality in the music.
With Jonathan Dove studied composition with Cambrige’s own Robin Holloway and has written for performance at Glyndebourne, principally with Flight his first real success. In the song cycle The Passing of the Year came the brutal recognition of the impermanence of life, its beauty and its ephemeral nature. From William Blake’s stern demands “ O Earth, O Earth , return! he takes us through to Emily Dickinson ‘s even more strident “ Answer July” I had never read or heard this remarkable eccentric mutinous poem before and the choir gave it their harmonic and voluble best with its demands
‘Answer July-
Where is the Bee-
Where is the Blush-
Where is the Hay?
Wonderful to hear!
But the gamut of human frailty was not over
Try the lugubrious Adieu !Farewell earth’s bliss! from Thomas Nashe’s A Litany in Time of Plague
“The plague full swift goes by:
I am sick and I must die
Lord Have Mercy on us!”
People did have it even worse in the past: I see poor Nashe the poet died at only 34 years old.
The Cycle ended with Tennyson’s now famous Ring out, wild bells
“Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more:
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
At which point the interval felt like the end of an emotional rollercoaster. But thankfully we had Rachmaninov Symphony Number 2 in E minor to follow..
The contrast was exciting. Out went the rows of singers and in came Tom Primrose, a performer and pianist himself and celebrated throughout the country and abroad for his close successes with a slew of top flight musicians , both singers and instrumentalists.
Paula Muldoon is the leader of the Cambridge Philharmonic . She was in brilliant form in this famous concerto, as she has been throughout a glowing career that has included the London Symphony Orchestra and under the baton of such luminaries as Sir John Eliot Garner and Sir Simon Rattle. . Paula has worked with the local ensemble at the Yellow House Labs in Girton and her own composition can be heard on Spotify. As can Rachmaninov of course. I did hear it over again there, but nothing compares to the drama , the joy and the sheer overwhelming energy of a top orchestra live on brilliant form.
