Review: Airedale Symphony Orchestra – Epic Journeys, King’s Hall

THE afternoon concert last Sunday attracted an enthusiastic audience to the King’s Hall for a varied concert of largely romantic music. The Airedale Symphony orchestra under conductor Ben Crick led off with a full-blooded account of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman overture full of the fire and foreboding evoked by the blazing brass fanfares and permeated by the rushing seas in the strings. The performance had great balance between the sections of the orchestra and provided a strong start to the concert.

Rachmaninoff’s fourth piano concerto is much less well known than its predecessors and gave the composer great trouble – he was still revising it his last years. Despite its suggestions of influence from Jazz and from modernist composers it is still an essentially romantic work. Pianist, William Green, was completely in command of the complex and highly percussive piano part and partnered the orchestra well throughout. The first movement’s energy felt a little tentative at times but came to a rousing ending. The second was more successful with the lyrical elements coming to the fore and excellent playing from the woodwind. The third movement contained all the brio you could want and brought the concerto to a successful conclusion.

It was in Sibelius’s second symphony that the strings of the orchestra finally came into their own with full bodied legato tone and precise pizzicatos. The woodwind and particularly the brass continued to please throughout. The second movement started well with the bass and cello pizzicato matched by excellent playing in the bassoons but it took a long time to build a sense of cohesion, The third movement contrasts rushing string passages with periods of quiet reflection in nature led by the woodwind and then moves seamlessly into the finale with its majestic string melodies. The orchestra took all this in its stride as it moved confidently, under Ben Crick’s clear direction, to bring the symphony to its blazing culmination and well-deserved applause.