Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra
Alison Balsom plays Zimmermann
West Road Concert Hall
Sunday 14 October 2007

The opening concert of the Cambridge Philharmonic Society’s 2007-8 season, at the West Road Concert Hall on 14 October, combined fun and substantial food for musical thought in exhilarating measure. The audience was large and enthusiastic, the playing confident and disciplined and the whole evening a marked artistic success.

Readers will know that Michael Kennedy has rightly described Vaughan Williams’ London Symphony, which filled the first half of the programme, as his most “Mahlerian”, implying that it aims at creating a whole musical universe of its own. It certainly demands virtuoso playing from the orchestra and a fine sense of balance, impressionistic texture and its overall structure from the conductor. It got all three in full measure from Tim Redmond and the Society’s orchestra. Many of the Cambridge Philharmonic’s players have enjoyed or are enjoying a full professional training, though only a modicum of them actually earn their living as professionals.

They played with an intensity, a fire and a sensitivity to Vaughan Williams’ idiom that made it hard to believe that they were not a fully professional band. The tricky passages in the scherzo were nimbly and convincingly negotiated, the dynamic range was enormous and the expressive phrasing of the woodwind and strings in the slow movement moving and atmospheric. The hectic passages in the outer movements were effectively realised and Mr. Redmond emphasised the great cry of anguish at the opening of the finale by allowing only a minimal pause between it and the end of the scherzo. The poetic close to the finale was beautifully realised. A very musical friend who admitted he “wasn’t really into Vaughan Williams” told me afterwards that the performance had quite made him revise his opinion.

“Follow that” was the unspoken order of the day. Which is precisely what brilliant young trumpeter Alison Balsom did. The name of Berndt Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970) is, I imagine, a name to drop amongst the cognoscenti rather than one familiar in most music-loving households. So it was fascinating to hear from Mr. Redmond (aided and abetted by a well-balanced small group of singers from the Phil’s choir) how his short but powerful Trumpet Concerto, based on the spiritual Nobody Knows de Trouble I See, is constructed. They provided a helpful introduction to this concentrated and eclectic work.

For sheer purity of sound, precision of attack, clarity and variety of tone-colour, Ms Balsom must be right at the top among young solo trumpeters; and the watchful Mr. Redmond and the orchestra ensured that their contribution to the concerto too made a considerable impact. The audience responded with gusto and Ms Balsom was persuaded to add an encore piece.

Sir Thomas Beecham would hardly have described Zimmermann’s concerto as a “lollipop”. Shostakovich’s Suite for Variety Orchestra − culled from the music that he composed for various Soviet films − which ended the concert, obligingly provided a whole bag-full of them. This was a most enjoyable evening as well as a musically stimulating one.

Notes for editors

For further information including biographies please see our web site, www.cam-phil.org.uk.
If you would like any interviews for your publication please contact publicity@cam-phil.org.uk, giving as much notice as possible.