When my housemate (an accomplished violinist) remarks casually: “I’m just popping to orchestra practice”, she makes little of the scale of live orchestral music. For her, it is something one can just simply ‘pop’ to. I don’t listen to much classical music, so, after hearing her symphony orchestra play at their winter recital, her casualness struck me. Absorbing the sounds of a live orchestra is, in fact (at least for a layman like me), a truly immense experience. The overlapping voices of disparate instruments, swarming into a single body of sound under a high roof, produces a feeling of ‘bigness’ to be found nowhere else.
I was in the audience, on the first Sunday in December, in a sold-out Firth Hall, to hear Sheffield University Symphony Orchestra’s first recital of the academic year. They played lively renditions of music by William Grant Still, Frederick Delius and Tchaikovsky, with notable solo performances.
Symphony No. 1 – Afro-American, by William Grant Still (1895 – 1978), began the evening. A flightily, highly textured piece migrating quickly between different musical sections, it combined 12-bar blues motifs with the wide, grandiose sounds of a ballroom dance. The fourth movement was particularly memorable; its sombre allusions, through darker string voicings, to The Great Depression (the backdrop against which Still was working), were played with care and marked a confident handling of a complex arrangement.
After visiting the wine-centric (if slightly overpriced) interval bar, the audience reconvened for a rendition of the late-Romantic composer Frederick Delius’s (1862 – 1934) Sleigh Ride (Winter’s Night). The younger student-conductor – taking a hiatus from the percussion section specifically to conduct the piece – brought out the delicate (notably festive) wind and string melodies, evoking a freezing Scandinavian sleigh ride. It was an appropriately chosen composition for the early-December Christmas anticipation.
The Orchestra concluded the evening with one of the most popular ballets of all time: Tchaikovsky’s (1840-1893) Swan Lake. The players grasped this piece with a new confidence; its swooning motifs worked well to exhibit the full power of the brass and string sections, and the audience were visibly moved by such recognisable melodies. The violin and cello solos were particularly noteworthy: both were highly technical and played with control and patience. The harp solo, too, struck a wonderful balance between force and delicacy.
The hurling of roses onto the stage from the front row concluded an evening of highly varied music, and a reminder of the musical prowess of so many Sheffield students. The Symphony Orchestra will play again for the public at their summer recital; I highly recommend joining them.
