Community Centre, Nairn, 23 August 2008

Donald Goskirk and Rachel Snow

SEEING the brochure for the new season by Music Nairn, the organisation that has arisen phoenix-like from the old Nairn Performing Arts Guild, had me digging in my memory for a previous occasion that a full orchestra had played in the Brighton of the North. But in vain. So the concert by the Highland Chamber Orchestra in the new Nairn Community Centre was especially welcome and warranted the near sell-out audience of well over two hundred.

Since its inception eight years ago the Highland Chamber Orchestra has developed by leaps and bounds under its principal conductor, Susan Dingle, and its repertoire has broadened out to include contemporary work as well as the classical standards.

The Orchestra attracts its personnel from all across The Highlands, many professionally-trained. Some are music teachers, others are accomplished amateurs and there is a healthy contingent of talented young players. They come together two or three times a year to perform in venues across the length and breadth of the region.

This latest programme opened with Rossini’s overture L’italiana in Algeri. It is ironic that only a few of Rossini’s many operas still hold a place in the opera house, but his overtures enjoy considerable popularity in the concert hall.

Perhaps that is because the sparkle and delight of his overtures does not often extend to the full opera. There are not many audiences who will sit through the five hours or so of mostly unmemorable music that make up William Tell or The Thieving Magpie.

However, this overture made an excellent opening to the concert from its staccato crescendo introduction to its effervescent main theme which demands great accuracy from the players and the opportunity for most sections to shine. The only losers were those of the audience who had not picked up that the concert start was thirty minutes earlier than that originally published.

To many people, Benjamin Britten is like Marmite – you love him or you hate him. Although who does not have fond childhood memories of Marmite soldiers with their boiled egg? And so it is with Britten’s Simple Symphony, an orchestration of some of his childhood works.

Every movement evokes memories and becomes all the more enjoyable for that. Susan Dingle had her orchestra ticking all the boxes; the bourrée was boisterous, the pizzicato was playful, the sarabande was sentimental (and lush) and the finale was frolicsome. Just as dictated by Britten.

Then it was time for a piece of Mozart, but an uncommon piece. He rewrote the recitative and aria from the beginning of Act II of Idomeneo so that they are now more suited to concert performance rather than with the rest of the opera.

The soprano soloist was Kathryn Gallacher, who divides her time between her singing and administering to her patients as a GP in Fochabers, not forgetting the demands of motherhood. Her delivery was clear and pure, and she overcame the unforgiving acoustic of the hall with its limited reverberation.

I wish I could say the same for the violin obbligato played by orchestra leader Donald Goskirk. Ten days earlier I had heard him play Mozart and Dvorak in Inverness Cathedral and I had gone out with a smile on my face. But for this performance his playing sounded flat and unresponsive. I can only put it down to the acoustic of the venue.

The Highlands has many reasons to be grateful to musical guru, Gordon Tocher, not least his composition Tidescape which opened the second half. His inspiration came from the view from Mallaig across to Skye and Rhum, but he leaves every individual to draw their own mental images from the atmosphere he creates.

For me, I heard the waves ebbing and flowing, the gulls circling, the wind whistling, the seaspray splashing, the calm of evening and all the time elements of the dissonance of nature. All in all, a most satisfying experience and ably performed in the composer’s presence by the Highland Chamber Orchestra.

The symphony to round off the programme was by Schubert, No 1 in D major. An early teenage work which looks back to Haydn and Mozart, but includes some Beethovian influence. It gave the orchestra ample opportunity to shine and earn the well deserved applause from the Nairn audience.

The Highlands has good reason to be proud of its orchestra and it will not be long before there is another concert in this new venue. Previous performers, all smaller groups, have suffered from the heckling of the seagulls on the roof, but I was scarcely aware of them during this concert [although one with exquisite timing did lead Susan Dingle to delay starting the Rossini overture while it performed it’s own cadenza, initially forte but incorporating a very controlled decrescendo – Ed.]. Perhaps the Highland Chamber Orchestra has found a way of taming them.

© James Munro, 2008

Links

• Highland Chamber Orchestra