Fauré, Ravel, and Stravinsky with the Oxford Sinfonia and Carolyn Dobbin
19th January 2008
 
This was an ambitious programme for a non-professional orchestra, but it was executed very convincingly indeed. Such intensity pervaded the interpretation, that one had no choice but to forgive the slight imperfections which are inevitably present in an amateur performance.
 
The Oxford Sinfonia is an amateur chamber orchestra composed of players from in and around Oxford. Tonight they were conducted by Nicholas Cleobury, a former organ scholar of Worcester College, and currently conductor of the Britten Sinfonia. Irish mezzo-soprano Carolyn Dobbin sang in Ravel’s Shéhérazade.
 
The concert opened with Fauré’s charming suite ‘Masques et Bergamasques’. Whilst it is probably not, as the concert programme claimed, Fauré’s most famous orchestral work, it perhaps should be. The suite opens with a vigorous Ouverture, which was played with more energy than many commercial
recordings. The Minuet was executed with charm, and the glorious faux-Baroque Gavotte was taken at an appropriately steady pace, revelling in its own frivolous gravity. The piece closed with the dreamy Pastorale, beautifully rounding off this delightful work. Despite occasional slight scratchiness in the high strings, this was a thoroughly enjoyable performance.
 
The next number was Ravel’s fairy tale suite Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose), which tonight was presented in the five-movement version for orchestra. Although a few imperfect solos occasionally detracted from the magic, this piece was otherwise well delivered. The dazzling percussion playing in the quasi-oriental third movement (Laideronette, Impératrice des pagodes) was particularly impressive. The close of the final movement (Le jardin féerique) had a hint of Disney about it as the wedding bells chimed for the Prince and Princess: an appropriate happy ending to the more naive section of the programme.
 
To close the first half, soloist Carolyn Dobbin took to the stage for the song cycle Shéhérazade. With an impressive CV it was no surprise that her performance tonight was both musically and theatrically superb.  This performance was sometimes (but not always) matched by the orchestra, which had some tuning issues in the brass section. The first poem, Asie, was sung with a wide-eyed restraint, occasionally  breaking forth into exuberant climax. There was some beautiful flute playing in La flûte enchantée, and L’indifférent was delivered with a delicious sensuousness.
 
The ‘final hurdle’, as one player described it to me in the interval, was Stravinsky’s Symphony in C, and the hurdle was well and truly cleared. The symphony started strongly, and the rhythmic levity of the opening section gave way to a breathtaking violence reminiscent of The Rite of Spring. The
contrasting peaceful and disturbed elements of the Larghetto were conveyed skilfully, at turns playful and threatening. The Scherzo was perhaps slightly more chaotic than the composer intended, but this formidable movement was tackled with characteristic vigour. The finale was exquisite as the piece built up to a tense climax and then failed to resolve, settling into a combination of C and G chords before fading away.
 
This was an impressive concert, the Oxford Sinfonia playing to a very high standard. Their next engagement is a charity come-and-sing Verdi’s Requiem on 2 February at the Sheldonian Theatre (tickets available from Tickets Oxford 01865 305305).
 
by Daniel Trott

Christopher Allen, Stephanie Illingworth and Sarah Karacs take a look at the rising waters…
 

The REAL election '08UPDATE: I found this Die Linke car in the street, but I'm not sure it's a Trabant. I know little about cars – do any car fans out there wish to tell me what this is? It does say Ford on the front… Coming back from work this evening, the bus I was in was overtaken by an old yellow banger with a massive flag poking out. After a closer look, it turned out be a tactically placed Trabant, the notoriously hard-to-come-by one-size-fits-all car of the old East German communist state.

And the flag – an election banner, urging Frankfurters to vote for the new boys on the block, Die Linke, the Left Party, in Sunday's crucial regional elections

In fact, new on the block may not be such an accurate description. The far-left outfit, who claim on their literature that privatisation is the theft of public property, were founded only last year. But they are the successors of a party that have been around for much longer – the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), itself a later incarnation of the Communist Party of the old German Democratic Republic (GDR). Marxist intellectual Alex Callinicos has said the party “represents a profound challenge to social democracy” (I think that was meant to be a good thing). Running the party are a former member of the old GDR’s legislative chamber Lothar Bisky, who chose to emigrate to the East at the age of 18, and Oskar Lafontaine, who led the opposition SPD during part of the Helmut Kohl era.

I tried to get a snap of the Trabi with my phone when it zoomed past proclaiming the glory of the old Communist East, but it was moving too fast. And the party, which must have destroyed several rainforests for all its mass advertising in the last few months, is doing the same thing to the political establishment too (sorry, it was late at night). By this time next week, these neo-communists might be some of the most politically powerful people in Germany.

How? Well, latest polls for Sunday’s state election show that the opposition social democrats, the SPD, are quickly catching up on the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU), and the Frankfurter Allgemeine put them both on 38% in this morning’s paper. This remarkable upturn for the moderate left has made the ruling CDU’s task of finding a majority in the house much smaller harder (sorry again). The SPD have benefited from the backfiring of some hard-line talk on crime and immigrants from the incumbent regional PM Roland Koch (CDU), which led to him being branded a racist and will have hurt his standing among the large ethnic minority community in the largely urban state. Andrea Ypsilanti, on the hand, turned out well at last night’s TV debate and look to be on an upper. The last time I blogged on the opinion polls, the CDU led by 43% to the SPD’s 32%. This could now go either way.

But, as so often with German politics, it will all come down to who can find allies to form a coalition that exceeds 50% of all votes. The centre-right Free Democrats will probably work with the CDU, while the Greens are expected to be up for an SPD-led coalition.

At play, though, is the crucial 5% rule — the minimum share of the vote a party must receive to get seats in parliament — and how this will affect Die Linke’s chances. If they reach the 5% mark, they could join forces with the SPD and tip the balance towards a left-wing coalition, giving the state Premiership to Ypsilanti, once considered a lightweight without a chance. The far-left may then be the party that holds the key to the coalition, and therefore a major influence on policy.

An editorial in Focus this week (not available online!) pointed out the likelihood that the fierce polarisation of the SPD-CDU battle would encourage votes for the centrist parties and screw up Die Linke’s hope’s of becoming Hessen’s kingmakers. If they succeed, their influence would be real. If they fail — well, maybe they’ll realise zooming up the Autobahn in a 1960s rustbucket isn’t the best electoral strategy.

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Three drunken Lady Margaret Hall students jumped into a swollen stream for a naked swim around midnight, Thursday night of first week.

The police arrived at the canal near the Worcester Street car park in Park End Street at about 12:15 am after receiving word that a man was in the waters. Lifebelts were immediately thrown to three men in sight.

Two men grabbed the lifebelts and were promptly pulled out of the stream while one refused to be rescued and started swimming away. The third traveled about 300 yards being swept along by the currents. He passed beneath two bridges and a weir before the police managed to get a hold of him.

The swimmers were each fined £80 for their midnight dip.

PC Paul Philips of Thames Valley Police commented, “These students had clearly been drinking. They were naked and must have thought it would be funny to go swimming, but hadn’t realized the dangers and the strength of the water.”

“Once the students were in the patrol car, they sobered up pretty quickly and became quite apologetic,” he added.

See this week’s Cherwell for more in-depth coverage on the swimmers.

OUSU may cancel the referendum on the controversial No Platform policy, after OUSU Council postponed a vote on the issue last Friday.

This latest twist in the wrangling over No Platform comes after an amendment to the policy was drawn up and proposed at last week’s council by James Lamming, VP for Access and Academic Affairs. However, a vote on this amendment – which will no longer be called ‘No Platform’ – was postponed after it was suggested that most students did not know enough about the details of the policy to make a well-informed decision. At the next OUSU Council meeting, there will be a vote to decide whether to go ahead with the referendum, or to adopt the amended policy instead.

A number of JCRs passed a motion calling for a referendum last term. The No Platform policy has courted controversy in the past. It led OUSU to condemn the Union’s invitations to David Irving and Nick Griffin last term, and to force two Oxide radio presenters to take back their invitation to interview Nick Griffin on their show in Hilary 2007.

Joel Mullan, St Peter’s JCR President, said that OUSU needed to move on. “I personally support the No Platform policy – I do not believe that our student union's resources should be used to assist those who want to incite violence. However, OUSU has got to resolve this issue once and for all, so that it can stop wasting time debating No Platform and get on with the essential work it needs to be doing on things like rent, academic affairs, and welfare,” he said. by Jack Farchy Read this week's Cherwell for more in-depth coverage on this story.

Sangwon Yoon and Jenny Moore provide a mid-week news report . Tune in every week!

The Oxford Union Debating Society organised a memorial debate in honour of the assassinated Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.The event, held last Thursday on January 17th, was attended by former colleagues and friends of the past Union president as well as her son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. The first year Christ Church student did not speak on the occasion.The debate proposition ‘this house believes that the ideal state is a secular state’ was scheduled way before Ms Bhutto’s death but was ideally suited to become a memorial for her, according to a family spokesman.Alan Duncan MP was amongst those who paid tribute, saying: ‘She was amazing, fiery and fun.’by Katherine Hall

With their new single, the wonderfully titled ‘Diamond Hoo Ha Men’, Supergrass remain, as ever, comfortably within the mainstream boundaries the band have always been so fond of. The bass seems like a cheap imitation of The White Stripes’ Blue Orchid, and the lyrics ‘I’ve got to get you in my suitcase’ patently echo the band’s desire to reinvigorate the last chagrins of youth and originality which exist within them. And yet, the song is alluring. The bass has a dirty ring to it, and the chords, although simple, have a familiarity that evokes notions of simple, good rock. This, in a sense, has always been both the dilemma and the art of Supergrass – they are wonderful at imitation, but not so much at innovation.

by Dave Wise