{"id":4679,"date":"2018-10-14T20:31:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T19:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=4679"},"modified":"2018-10-14T20:32:28","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T19:32:28","slug":"maidstone-symphony-orchestra-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=4679","title":{"rendered":"Maidstone Symphony Orchestra"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mote Hall, Maidstone,13 October 2018<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The opening concert in MSO\u2019s 108th<\/sup> season really belonged to young cellist, Maxim Calver. Aged only 18, he was a finalist in this year\u2019s BBC Young Musician of the Year and he stood in at short notice for the booked soloist.<\/p>\n

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Unusually he began, at conductor Brian Wright\u2019s request, with a solo piece – a variation, from a work by Lutoslawski commissioned by Rostopovitch and pretty dramatic it was too. He played this ambitious piece, complete with glissandi and quarter tones with intense insouciance.<\/p>\n

Then, in place of Shostakovich\u2019s First Cello Concerto, it was on to a strikingly mature performance of Tchaikovsky\u2019s Variations on a Rococo<\/em> Theme<\/em> with the legato variations leaned on for maximum romance and the faster ones delivered with crisp witty aplomb. His use of harmonics is spectacular too.<\/p>\n

And as if that weren\u2019t enough he then treated us to a richly nuanced encore \u2013 the very familiar but evergreen Sarabande<\/em> from Bach\u2019s First Cello Suite. Thus, this engaging, poised young man who smiles though the music when his rapier eyes aren\u2019t staring into the distance, whizzed through the music of three centuries in less than an hour.<\/p>\n

The concert began with Britten\u2019s Sinfonia da Requiem<\/em> which is getting a number of outings this year to mark the centenary of the 1918 Armistice. It\u2019s a tricky work. You don\u2019t often see MSO front desk players visibly counting but they carried it off. The Dies Irae movement with the relentless rhythms ably underpinned by weighty percussion\u00a0 (seven in the section) was especially impressive and there was some lovely work from harpists, Milo Harper and Alex Tindall.<\/p>\n

Pictures at an Exhibition<\/em>, of course, as we now usually hear it owes as much to Ravel\u2019s orchestration as it does to Mussorgsky\u2019s original piano suite. In this intelligent performance Brian Wright allowed every soloist and solo section\u00a0 – some excellent playing here – to ensure that we noticed their contribution but without ever letting the piece feel bitty. It sailed along with warmth, fireworks and lots of colour. At the end Wright stood tuba player, Andy Bridges up first and quite right too. His solo was splendid as was Mike Austin\u2019s work on alto saxophone. And The Great Gate of Kiev, the final section, with those evocative tubular bells and cymbal clashes must have sent every member of the audience away with melody ringing in their heads.<\/p>\n

Yes, the season is off to a fine start. Roll on 1st<\/sup> December.<\/p>\n

Susan Elkin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mote Hall, Maidstone,13 October 2018 The opening concert in MSO\u2019s 108th season really belonged to young cellist, Maxim Calver. Aged only 18, he was a finalist in this year\u2019s BBC Young Musician of the Year and he stood in at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4679"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4682,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679\/revisions\/4682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}