by Hannah Nepil
It would seem that the Oxford Studio Orchestra hit the proverbial jack-pot on Saturday, when they performed three works by some of the hottest personalities in Russian showbiz: Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov. From the cartoon depiction of the Kremlin emblazoned on the programme's front cover, to the notable absence of a single empty seat contained in the entire expanse of Mansfield Chapel, it was clear that every ounce of potential offered by this winning formula had been diligently realised. One might argue that such credentials sufficed to ensure the concert's success; as one nameless member of the audience remarked: “It doesn't really matter how they play because you can kind of hear what it's meant to sound like in your head anyway”. The performers themselves could have done with some of this assurance. Their timid appeal, “We hope that the audience will appreciate the end result of our labours, even if tempi and nuances do not always match those to be found in their CD libraries” was endearing but did not cast an auspicious light over the entertainment to come.
A little more optimism would not have been misplaced. The opening to Shostakovich's Festive Overture was carried by the brass with real verve which continued to gather momentum. The players' energy was infectious, even if it did radiate predominantly from the percussion and brass section, who proceeded to bull-doze the strings. With hindsight this effect could be cast however, not as a misjudgement of acoustics but as an appropriate reappraisal of timbral balance, for example at the beginning of Stravinsky's Firebird where the absence of the brass was mourned. Although the eerie muttering of the strings evoked the right atmosphere, they overshot the mark, to the detriment of clarity. The mood was adeptly controlled by the conductor, Christopher Fletcher-Campbell who subtly bent the tempo to convey Stravinsky's quirky manipulation of rhythm, nevertheless, the poignancy of certain moments, such as the folk song of the finale was lost in an apologetic fumble.
The cold-blooded sabotage of Rachmaninov's decadent tribute to self-indulgence, his Second Piano Concerto, might have been hard to forgive. Luckily, the pianist, Tallis Barker's masterfully controlled emotion and technical dexterity seemed to kick start the strings into action, and infused the first movement with a sense of drive and excitement, testified by a lone, swiftly stifled clap from somewhere in the auditorium, which punctuated the gap between the first and second movements. With such a promising beginning, the second movement was eagerly anticipated: If the first movement were to be described as a little cheesy, then the second would be more of a gorgonzola bonanza, which has been deemed worthy of hijacking for many a worthy contemporary cause. If one tried very hard, they could even imagine Celine Dion herself being majestically elevated from the back of the percussion section at the end of the movement before breaking into a rendition of “All By Myself”. Sadly, any such illusion was dispelled by the grinding of the strings, which was heightened by the slow tempo. They however, could not distract from Tallis Barker's sensitive rendition of the movement, set off by his assured technical finesse. Happily, with the last movement returned the exuberance of the first, and it was mainly with this impression that the audience was left.
