Orchestra of Opera North: Distant Shores
Huddersfield Town Hall
By Ron Simpson
**** (4 stars)
The latest concert in the Kirklees Concert Season saved the best till last, with an immaculate – and ultimately extremely exciting – performance by the Orchestra of Opera North under Ben Gernon of Dvorak’s “other” great symphony.
Composed three years before the famous Symphony Number 9 From the New World, his Eighth Symphony is optimistic, full of dramatic contrast, unfailingly melodic and distinctively Czech in tone.
Born in 1989, Ben Gernon is one of the most acclaimed young conductors today, having worked with many of the world’s major orchestras and now filling the post of Principal Guest Conductor with the BBC Philharmonic.
He exercised an easy authority over the always responsive orchestra, exploring the shifts in tempo and dynamics, the unexpected variations on attractively simple melodies and the exhilarating momentum combined with unaffected lyricism of this wonderful symphony.
In his early years Dvorak was an orchestral musician and his awareness of the strengths of each section of the orchestra was total. The performance excelled in bringing out some beautiful woodwind writing and gave full value to the remarkable last movement with its lyrical melody for the cellos and extrovertly dramatic writing for brass, with whooping horns.
The first half of the concert consisted of admirable performances of two very different works.
Mozart’s Symphony Number 31, the Paris Symphony, began assertively with its orchestral tutti, but Mozart himself seems to have regarded such flourishes simply as a means to impress an ignorant Paris audience and the symphony’s high point was the brilliant finale, beginning with the brisk syncopations of a theme for violins only. Perhaps the serene slow movement could have done with a touch more elegance, but this was a pleasing opener before the massed orchestral forces assembled.
Elgar’s Sea Pictures was written for Dame Clara Butt who first performed it, dressed as a mermaid, in 1899.
This poses something of a problem for the modern performer. Clara Butt was the most formidable of the old-style British contraltos, well capable of rising above any orchestra Elgar could throw at her. Kathryn Rudge, delightful as Zerlina in Opera North’s current Don Giovanni, is a stylish and talented mezzo-soprano and her lower register tended to get lost in the dense orchestral accompaniment.
There was still much to enjoy: the orchestral colour, the bright attack of Rudge’s upper register, the intelligent shaping of everything she sang and some winning melodies, notably the evocative Where Corals Lie.
