Last updated 05:41, Friday, 03 October 2008

Academy of St Martin in the Field for Penrith Music Club, Penrith Methodist ChurchOnce again the club began its season in the best possible way with a performance by one of the UK’s leading chamber orchestras.

String orchestras can often be bland and over-sentimental. The Academy sound, however, is direct, often astringent, with depth and vigorous colour.

This was certainly apparent in the opening two works. The Janacek Suite for Strings is an early work showing little of the composer’s mature style but the playing was sonorous and expressive. Rhythms were crisp and clearly articulated and the tone often gutsy and unsentimental.

In contrast, the mature Divertimento for Strings of Bela Bartok was immediately characterful with inventive textures and harmonic language entirely characteristic of the composer. The players seemed completely at home, playing it in a thoroughly idiomatic way. In the second, slow movement the aching desolate melodies carried complete conviction. By contrast the sweeping finale was full of the barbaric rhythmic complexity of Hungarian folk dance and this English-based orchestra played it for all it was worth.

A short piece by Thea Musgrave gave the players an opportunity to display their virtuosity, but although the textures and strands were interesting it was hard to see where the music was heading.

Finally the orchestra played the Dvorak Serenade in E Major, with great beauty and with obvious affection. But here, in a familiar work, one felt the players should have worked harder to bring home the piece as fresh and new in the way they had done with the Janacek and Bartok works. One wanted to hear more of the characteristic ASMF sound so evident before the coffee break!

A great start to the club’s season but let’s be sure our music’s colours remain sharp and challenging and don’t become overlaid with the patina of respectability and familiarity.

IAN JONES