David Boarder reviews Bishop’s Stortford Sinfonia’s winter concert in Stansted

David Boarder reviews Bishop’s Stortford Sinfonia’s winter concert in Stansted

Bishop’s Stortford Sinfonia’s winter concert at St John’s Church in Stansted attracted a near-capacity audience.

The first half of the programme highlighted the flute playing of Matthew Featherstone, principal flute of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and showed off the virtuosity of all the players in the second half.

Before the Vivaldi flute concerto we heard Swedish-born Andrea Tarrodi’s Lucioles, written in 2012 for the Swedish Chamber Orchestra.

Here, fireflies flit and shimmer and swarm in great eruptions of dissonance led by the timpani, which are contrasted by quite simple solo cello lines. This is a busy, complex score and one to listen to again, as I am doing whilst writing and as several of the players told me after the concert.

Vivaldi wrote over 100 concertos and choral pieces for the girls in the Ospedale dela Pietà in Venice in the early 1700s. The so-called Goldfinch concerto for flute and strings is one of the best, requiring both virtuosity and good breath control for the longest phrases. Both soloist and orchestra brought colour and shaping to all three movements.

I had not expected what happened next. Matthew returned to show how far flute playing has evolved over the past 400 years with Ian Clarke’s Zoom Tube from 1999. A real tour de force, you can see the score and hear this on YouTube with all the bends, chords and glissandi which an open-hole flute allows along with spits, coughs and stamps.

After this, the orchestra’s conductor, Rebecca Miller, led a question-and-answer session with Matthew and Simon Gilliver, the orchestra’s principal flute and founder. This brought us more information about the planning of the programme, explanation of some of the techniques of flute playing and further ideas for the orchestra.

To complete this half of the evening, Matthew played Debussy’s Syrinx. This is every flautist’s Everest with its representation of Pan’s unrequited love of Syrinx. She tries to escape his attention by turning herself into a reed in the river, only to die when Pan cuts down all the reeds in search of her. All very sad and played with much colour and a strong lower register – the difficult bit!

Before the interval, Rebecca introduced some of the main themes from Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony, with the different sections of the orchestra illustrating her main points.

The attribution of Italian refers to Mendelssohn writing the symphony whilst travelling around Italy between 1829 and 1831. He regarded it as one of his happiest pieces and it is a huge favourite with audiences and players, despite being difficult with a lot of double tonguing for wind and brass and very demanding string writing in the first movement especially, and then in the relentless Tarantella.

Rebecca is a fine conductor and Tanya Barringer an excellent leader. That the orchestra can produce this standard of playing in such a short time (just two rehearsals) indicates the great skill of each player and the confidence and commitment of the conductor and management team. Well done everyone.

Please do not miss the orchestra’s next concert on Sunday April 27 at Bishop’s Stortford College (4pm). You can find full details at www.bishopsstortfordsinfonia.com.