GPO end year with
‘Mozart and new work
SPARKLING Mozart with a
dash of newly distilled bitters
made a refreshing draught for
the audience to quaff at Venon
Handley’s last concert of the
year with the Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir
at the Civic Hall.
Three present principals of
the orchestra, James Brown
(oboe), Nicholas Hunka (bas-
soon) and Peter Clack (horn),
and one recently past, John
Denman (clarinet), played
Mozart’s delightful Sinfonia
Concertante in E Flat with
beautiful balance and intimacy.
. Control of smooth dynamics
is not so easy in a wind
ensemble as with strings, but all
the subtleties of phrasing in
quartet were executed with
seemingly instinctive ease. In
the combined power of tone,
the clarinet sometimes dominated and there might have
been more delicacy if Mozart
techniques, enhanced rather
had stuck to his original
intention of the flute, but the ‘than disturbed by modulated
pure cantabile of the Adagio
dissonances.
arioso and the mock pomposity - Sally Burgess, out of the
of the final Andantino, with its
Royal College of Music only
intricate Variations, were most
this year, gave a finely graded
performance of the neo-modal
pleasurable. The orchestra, led
by Hugh Bean, accompanied
solo part. Her warm soprano
voice, evenly toned throughout
with unhurried grace.
How good it was to hear a , its range, was movingly sorrowmodern work of some pretenful, especially in the concluding
sion uncluttered by serial -Sonnet by - Samuel Daniel,
freakishness. Carey Blyton is
Care-Charmer Sleep.
‘not a composer whose name has
The Philharmonic¢ choir,
roused from their patient seats,
come my way before, but his
Lachrymae, In Memoriam John
exhibited an excellent blend of
Dowland, is something I shall
choral tone and united volume
look forward to hearing again.
-in Mozart’s splendid Vesperae
It is, in effect, a song cycle,
Solennes de Confessore. One
“for high voice and string- expects Vespers to be quietly
orchestra” to poems by Drum-gentle, but Mozart gave these a
mond, Shelley, Weiss, Blake- vigour and joyful zest more
and Daniel. Though sad in
typical of a Jubilate.
The glorification did drop to_
conception it never sinks to the
a reverent pianissimo in the
gloom of a dirge, but affords a
broad spectrum of rich harmoBeatus Vir, however, and,
nic texture, retaining Tudor
though the choir lost some
impetus at - the start of the
Magnificat, and the basses
revealed some lack of depth
in
the Laudate Pueri, it was, in‘all,
a most spirited and sometimes
thrilling performance of a
taxing work.
In her well-sustained- and
steadily unaffected soprano
Yvonne Kenny, from Australia,
used her growing experience of
concert singing to fine effect in
the Laudate Dominum, though
her consonants could have been
crisper. The other soloists, who
made up a worthy quartet in the
interpolations, were Sally Presant, Dennis O’Neil and John
Rath.
The Arrival of the Queen of
Sheba at the court of Solomon
was marked by Handel’s bustling strings and shimmering
oboe fanfares, as an appropriate opening to the pro-
gramme.
;
John C. Dodds.