Orchestral trainees’ performance

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32977, 25 July 1972, Page 14

Orchestral trainees’ performance

The NJI.B.C. Orchestral Trainees conducted by their musical director, Ashlev Heenan, played in the University Hall last night. An arrangement of three of the Cantiones Sacrae by a member of the orchestra, Elizabeth Turnbull, allowed William Byrd’s eloquent and richly original music to speak for itself. It was an impressive beginning to a concert in which highly disciplined string playing made its mark. This little orchestra's developed sense of ensemble was seldom more in evidence than in its playing of a Concertino attributed, with good reason, to Pergolesi. It bears his fingerprints clearly even in the awkward solo passages Which were not so effective in this performance as the more rewarding and sonorous tutti.

The trainees only number 10 (5 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos and a bass), but the group possesses a surprising range of sonorities. This was nowhere better shown than in Mr Heenan’s sensitively realised scoring of Bach’s Magnificat. A seemingly inexhaustible supply of timbres seemed available from the arranger’s deployment of solo, sdli and tutti passages. As the soloist in Stamltz’s D major Viola Concerto, Elizabeth Turnbull produced an impressively big tone which best expressed the

music’s message m the lyrical flights rather than passage work. The composition is not likely to win many friends and initially Miss Turnbull’s faulty intonation, which occasionally infected the orchestra’s contribution also, marred much of the first movement, except the cadenza which was shapely and confidently articulated. The performance fared progressively better from the andante and the soloists’ innate sense Of style came through more and more. Ashley Heenan’s conducting reflected his experience in music of the baroque era. It also revealed the players’ stylishness of approach in Mendelssohn’s attractive 9th Symphony for strings. Linear clarity was achieved without forsaking vigour although there were times when an unnecessary striving after intensity by the players resulted in a deterioration Of tonal quality. In the University Hall strangely, more and better sound resulted when a relaxed effortlessness Characterised the Playing. The scherzo and finale really glistened: well-ehosen tempi and a healthy regard for dynamic contrast made an appropriately exciting end to a stimulating concert. The trainees Will play at a lunch-time concert for the university today. —J.A.R.