The Halle Orchestra NNF 2023
This year's Norfolk & Norwich Festival reached its penultimate evening with a genuine juggernaut of a concert at St Andrew's Hall. The Hallé, the Manchester-based orchestra founded by Sir Charles Hallé, has been thrilling audiences since 1858, and now comprise players from over 14 different countries. Astonishingly, this was their first visit to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival since appearing in 1955, and was therefore providing possibly the very first chance for many of the evening's audience (myself included) to see and hear them perform here live.
In a change to the published programme, the concert began with 'Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), an eight minute whirlwind of a piece that has been described as 'music in the shape of a solar system'. It is performed at breakneck speed, with rococo loops spinning off like the soundtrack to some Stars Wars battle scene. Written in 2014 by the innovative and prolific American composer Missy Mazzoli, it proved itself a thrillng starter to the evening. Whether its placing iu the running order was changed to facilitate the stage organisation is not clear – very tight spacing meant that the grand piano, even with its lid down, obscured conductor Kevin John Edusei from our view, whilst the double basses and second violins seemed at risk of disappearing into the Foyer Bar corridors. However, the piece's pole position provided some exciting fore-play, and certainly deserved to be more than just an inter-course quickie.
With the piano lid raised and Argentinian pianist Nelson Goerner at the keys, conductor Edusei is now completely invisible to the audience in the stalls seats as the Hallé launch into Rachmaninoff's legendary 'Piano Concerto No 2', a work so well-loved that it consistently appears in the top three in Classic FM's annual 'Hall of Fame'. First performed in 1901, it receieved enormous exposure in 1945 with its inclusion in the soundtrack to David Lean's 'Brief Encounter', staring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. In 1975 its theme reappeared in Eric Carmen's tear-jerker 'All By Myself', a ballad that would re-surface 26 years later in the soundtrack to 'Bridget Jones' Diary'. And yet, in spite of this, it remains an orchestral masterpiece that has the tears welling up inside me every time I hear it. As a Piano Concerto, it is a magnificent emotional rollercoaster of a ride, a piece that has somehow survived all of its popular reiterations to remain a uniquely memorable work.
During the interval, the piano is expertly and efficiently removed, and replaced with a rostrum, upon which Kevin John Edusei, looking tall, lean and handsome in his long frock-coat jacket (an elegant sartorial look, but one which, I regret, would certainly render me short, stout and stumpy), is now in full and clear view of his audience and orchestra.
Antonín Dvořák's 'Symhony No 8' might sit somewhat in the shadow of it's illustrious 'New World' sibling but, to me, this remains one of the most exciting of his Romantic works. From the rattling timpani, pizzicato strings and bird-call flute of the first movement to the concluding turbulence of the fourth, this is a Symphony that manages to remain largely cheerful and uplifting, and is filled with the flavours and the essence of 19th century Bohemian folk music. Tonight, in St Andrew's Hall, the Hallé, under Edusei's masterful conducting, absolutely fill the hall with the richest and most wonderful sounds you could ever wish to hear.
Please let us hope that Norwich does not have to wait another sixty-eight years for that to happen again.
