City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Malvern Theatres (From Malvern Gazette)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Malvern Theatres

1:35pm Tuesday 28th June 2011 in Reviews

CONTINUING Malvern’s International Orchestral Concert Series, the CBSO conducted by Cornelius Meister, opened with a selection from Mendelssohn’s incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The overture set a beautiful scene as woodwind and scintillating high violins preceded a dynamic range of stunning orchestral colour including full-blooded brass, tuba growling and the CBSO’s magnificent strings singing gloriously.

Scherzo and Intermezzo were equally graphic and the closing Wedding March was a splendid celebration, with extra brass added.

The same composer’s Violin Concerto in E minor with soloist Arabella Steinbacher was a rather bland affair taking some time for her to settle into a comfortable tempo. Arabella pin-pointed some finely poised high registered notes, but this seductive music needed more commanding projection and heart-felt passion, particularly through the second movement Andante.

Beethoven’s 7th Symphony in A was a superb delivery from the first moments of an intoning oboe and other woodwind communing with brass; strings punctuated effectively with subtle expression, embracing translucent feathery violin pianissimos and sonorous melodious low strings.

The second beautiful dispirited movement of rhythmic marching was heralded by a sombre chord and the third was an articulate joyful gallop pre-empting a relentless finale as the CBSO reached its’ tumultuous conclusion.

By Jill Hopkins