Orchestra of Opera North’s Russian romance amid the snow

Dec 4 2010 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Orchestra Of Opera North

TITLE: Festival Of Light Opening Concert

VENUE: Huddersfield Town Hall

BY: Chris Robins

MANY thanks to Huddersfield Town Hall staff and the Orchestra of Opera North for being there in the wicked weather for the opening event of Huddersfield’s Festival of Light.

A lot of the audience made it too – most of us choosing hiking boots as the concert footwear de nos jours (well, of this week anyway).

Many thanks, also, for an evening of Russian romantic repertoire that avoided the boringly obvious.

Rimsky-Korsakov was at his best with folk-fantasy subjects and his May Night Overture is a great example.

Conductor Pablo González, on his Opera North Orchestra debut, made the slow sections particularly slow and gave us more detailed phrasing than the piece warrants, but a delightful performance nonetheless.

If there was a slightly edgy quality to the difficult orchestral introduction of the Third Piano Concerto by Prokofiev – a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov – it is worth noting that a day’s rehearsal in Leeds had been lost to the weather and therefore the whole concert was a remarkable achievement.

This was Prokofiev at his wittiest, cheekiest and most ironic – all qualities this orchestra does superbly.

Soloist John Lill, Britain’s much-loved senior pianist who is himself a considerable wit, sailed through in magnificent form.

Stravinsky was also a Rimsky-Korsakov student and it is fascinating to hear how his bending of tonality in The Firebird is similar to his teacher’s in May Night.

This detail was apparent because González’s Firebird, like his Prokofiev, had wit, cheek and subtlety rather than the pretentious menace we usually hear.