2010 Concert Review

The following article by Philip R. Buttall appeared in The Herald (Plymouth) on 14^th October 2010, and appears with permission here.

"Prescribe more achievable programme for doctors"

IT IS difficult enough to plan a sufficiently challenging programme for the players, that will also engage the audience, particularly where the late-afternoon start encourages some very young listeners along.

And when everything has to be rehearsed and dispatched within a mere weekend, just once a year, it is a tall order indeed.

Opening with Night on a Bare Mountain, there was always enough spirit in Mussorgsky's evocative writing and Simon Ible's enthusiastic direction to ensure the overall cohesion of the performance.

However, the Finale from Tchaikovsky's Pathétique is no easy piece, neither to play, nor for the listener, especially when divorced from all that normally leads up to it emotionally. Here a livelier movement from one of the other symphonies might have proved a far better stand-alone item.

Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto seemed the natural successor to last year's Grieg Concerto, but needed greater resources to do it justice.

Soloist Erdem Misirlioglu was outstanding, but the often insufficient orchestral weight, despite Cath Gutteridge's strong lead, frequently created an imbalance between piano and orchestra, which the dry acoustic could scarcely alleviate.

Here were some of our most committed members of society freely giving their time, for sheer enjoyment, but also to raise much-needed funds for the EarlyBird Diabetes Trust.

Prescribing a somewhat more achievable programme might have been the safer option, and just what the doctors ultimately needed.