Grammar School, Grantown-on-Spey, 22 August 2009

Highland Chamber Orchestra in Dornoch Cathedral

As a semi-professional orchestra, they inevitably fall short of the ensemble sound and precision of intonation of a fully professional outfit, but they play at a good level. Their standards have risen steadily since their early concerts, and they continue to produce good results under their Principal Conductor, Susan Dingle.

They opened this concert with Brahms, and the three Hungarian Dances – originally composed for his own amusement and first published as piano duets – which the composer himself orchestrated. This was the one work in the programme where I missed the full size and sonority of a symphony orchestra.

There were some issues of balance between strings and winds in the opening piece, No. 1 in G minor, but they conveyed the music’s rhythmic swagger in fine style. No. 3 in F major featured some very nicely articulated wind playing, and they recovered well from a sketchy opening in No. 10 in E major.

The orchestra has a policy of providing a platform for young musicians in the area to move on from the Highland Region Youth Orchestra, and several were in evidence in the line-up here. They also have a policy of encouraging players from the ranks to step forward as soloists, and it was Australian violinist Eleanor Cameron who had that opportunity here.

Cameron has been a notable addition to the orchestra since she arrived in Inverness in 2005, and has featured in several other contexts in Inverness, including the Merlewood Ensemble and the ensembles used by the Inverness Choral, Inverness Opera Company and Voiceworks.

Her choice of Concerto was an interesting one – Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, a piece that was premiered in Madrid (the probable reason for the unusual inclusion of castanets in the percussion section) by French violinist Robert Soetens in 1935. It is written for the HCO’s regular instrumentation, with the addition of extra percussion.

The orchestra sounded less confident and more tentative in this piece, but stuck to their task. Cameron acquitted herself admirably in the solo role, playing with concentration and commitment in a work in which the soloist is active much of the time. She coped admirably with the more technically demanding finger work, and drew out the expressive qualities of the music, notably in the long arching melody of the slow movement.

Beethoven’s Symphonies have figured regularly in the HCO’s programming, and it was the turn of the finely crafted Symphony No. 8 on this occasion. The orchestra immediately sounded more confident, and they gave an attentive and well shaped account of this work, smaller in scope than the late symphonies which flank it, but no less ingenious in its harmonic construction, and no less demanding on the players.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2009

Links

• Highland Chamber Orchestra