By Chris Robins

The current Kirklees Orchestral Season will be the last ever, part of the wrecking of British society and prosperity by Mr. Chancellor Osborne’s inane and economically pointless project to reduce the size of the state.

If the Seasons cannot be saved at the last minute, then this concert will become a monument to what Huddersfield once had.

The concert was given by one of this country’s few orchestras of truly international standard, the Orchestra of Opera North, and conducted by the inspirational Richard Farnes in his last season as their Music Director. It was a tour de force.

The programme of Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 demonstrated the Orchestra’s superb technique – clarity, correct note lengths, sustained tone even in the shortest notes, forward motion – which in turn was the basis for unsurpassable music-making.

Lutosławski’s Concerto is a three movement virtuoso vehicle for the orchestra as a whole, with many soloists. Farnes kept its structure tight and exact while allowing the logical development of it Polish folk tunes to flow. There was magic in the first movement when solo instruments overlapped with the main folk theme over a sustained chord and gentle piano tinklings.

Orchestra of Opera North pictured in full swing

In the second movement scherzo and trio the solo instruments were breathtaking. The final movement passacaglia of 18 repetitions starting with growling double basses and ending with high violin passages, followed by a toccata and a chorale and a high octane coda, was simply a coup d’orchestre from the Opera North players.

If the orchestral seasons do end, then this concert highlighted how much Huddersfield Town Hall will be missed. Its acoustic has been praised across the world. Andreas Seidel, who performed there as Leader of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Chamber Orchestra, said that there were other acoustics for chamber orchestra in the world as good as Huddersfield Town Hall’s “but none better”.

READ MORE:

The Orchestra of Opera North

Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 showed what he meant. Although Mahler wrote for a huge orchestra he often used it as a series of chamber orchestras of different instrumental combinations. Everything was clear as a bell in this acoustic and the extraordinary opening by ethereal strings was a shimmering evocation of time and space, physics and philosophy, impossible to perform better than this.

From here to the final movement’s expressionist outburst of despair Farnes and the Orchestra were well-nigh faultless.