On Tuesday 1st December the Oxford University Sinfonietta gave their end-of-term concert in the Wesley Memorial Church.
The programme ranged from Mozart and his lesser-known contemporary Wanhal, to Schnittke and John Williams. According to the conductor, James Longstaffe, the choice of repertoire was designed to ‘showcase some of the bright young soloists of Oxford nd hear some Williams that isn’t Star Wars!’
As the respectably-sized audience trickled in, fragments of conversation hinted at the anticipation that almost always precedes OU Sinfonietta concerts. As the repertoire is less-than-familiar to most of the listeners, murmurings of scepticism usually emerge at the idea of an ensemble playing pieces without hummable themes. This concert was no exception, but proved more than able to answer those apprehensions.
The short Mozart overture (Der Schauspieldirektor) that opened the concert was – despite occasional tuning problems – a lively start, and the ensemble was generally well-controlled. Unfortunately the delay in staging arrangements afterwards led to this brief piece feeling slightly isolated, a false start in a programme of much larger works.
However this was soon forgotten in the midst of a magnificent performance of Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No.1. Violinists Amy Tress and Isla Mundell-Perkins (Oxford University Orchestra leaders past and present) relished the technical demands of this work, and were sensitively supported by Daisy Fancourt on Harpsichord and Prepared Piano.
Wanhal’s Symphony in G Minor followed the interval, and, although probably a weaker point of the evening, was a rare chance to hear some underrated and underperformed music.
After this an enormous wind band crammed themselves into the always-tight performance space of the Wesley Memorial Church for a fine rendition of Williams’ Sinfonietta for Wind Ensemble. While this was for me a rather inaccessible piece, it served to indicate the wealth of talented wind players in Oxford at the moment.
Throughout the performance, Longstaffe’s conducting exemplified the clarity and reliability for which his instructor Peter Stark is so acclaimed, especially in the more challenging twentieth-century works.
Perhaps unusually for Sinfonietta concerts, the modern pieces were the more successful; the Concert Grosso in particular was a triumph. The savage energy of the violinists created in the “deranged-tennis match” cadenza was immediately absorbed by the harpsichord at the beginning of the rondo, leading to a moment of genuine, fragile beauty in a work full of parody and angst.
The almost theatrical power relations and the tension of the manic mood-swings underscored the raison d’être of the OU Sinfonietta. Such a gripping work cannot really be experienced through recordings, where none of the dynamism – or sheer physicality – of the playing is captured. The remit of the Sinfonietta is to perform works from before 1750 and after 1900, works that often fall outside of the realms of standard listening material, but this concert showed why: without performances of these works, they will never be understood or appreciated.
