King's Lynn Corn Exchange
King's Lynn Corn Exchange
With a dollop of Britten the NSO was giving its audience a bit of an education yesterday, for it was the first time the amateur orchestra had performed a piece by the composer.
The Sea Interludes of his opera Peter Grimes was played with great gusto, dramatism and evocation.
The orchestra came alive with the Storm, the brass and percussion sections providing a stonking boom to the stirring music which saw the bows of the string sections jumping like they were on the deathbed ocean that was the opera's main character's fate.
But the piece was outdone by both the orchestra's and pianist's performance of a more widely popular piece of 100 years previous.
Soloist Samantha Ward, on the piano, was dazzling playing Schumann's Piano Concerto, led by conductor James Stobart.
For the finale, Sibelius' First Symphony, the orchestra again outdid itself, setting its standards even higher. The more gusto the piece called for, the more they triumphed.
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