Concert Review 

By Edward Clark

Britten  Matinées Musicales Op. 24 (three movements)

Delius   Intermezzo (from Fennimore and Gerda)

Robin Milford Violin Concerto (1937)

William Alwyn Symphony No 4 in Bb

James Dickenson Violin 

Northern Lights Symphony Orchestra

Adam Johnson Conductor

St. Sepulchre without Newgate, London

Thursday 28^th November 2013

7.30pm

There was a disappointingly small audience for an imaginatively planned, majestically played concert of rare English music. Concerning the audience what can music lovers expect when they hear the recent vacuous (except for Parry) selections, from the Leader of HM Opposition, for his Desert Island Discs programme. He was, after all, merely following the example of our Prime Minister’s choice for the same programme of Benny Hill’s song Ernie, the fastest milkman in the West. Oh dear. We are a country led by true Philistines and those that love our musical heritage pay a heavy price in return.

Never mind. The music is the thing. The concert opened with early Britten, three of his Matinées Musicales, in sparkling, effervescent sound from Adam Johnson and his on-form players. The Delius Intermezzo from his opera Fennimore and Gerda, much beloved by Beecham, was delightfully paced by Johnson and the interaction within the wind section was pure poetry.

After these two Family Favourites (I wish!) we heard an extreme rarity in Robin Milford’s Violin Concerto composed in 1937 and performed twice then forgotten. James Dickenson took up the challenge magnificently and was so ably accompanied by Johnson and the orchestra. An extended work of nearly forty minutes Milford himself thought highly of it and quite right too.

A pupil of Vaughan Williams and Holst, Milford’s natural idiom became one based on our English heritage of diatonic and sometimes modal folk music. There is plenty of that in this score but it is so beautifully constructed and composed that the music sounds utterly beguiling and delightful.

The slow movement is darker with underlying tensions and the finale refuses to exploit expectations of a virtuoso ending. This fine work is a major find. Watch out for a forthcoming recording in 2014.

And so we move on, after the interval, to another major find: William Alwyn’s Fourth Symphony. Of the works by this doyen of post war British music, famous if at all for his many film scores, this Fourth is an important discovery. Written in 1959, it is a tightly constructed, melodically inspired, genuinely symphonic work that received an absolutely splendid performance. What I like about the NLSO is to see the back string desks play as if they are the leaders and not just turning up for their fee. The whole orchestra did Alwyn proud and he deserves it for this wonderful work.

Apart from being a consummate orchestrator of interesting material he even manages to foretell, in the scherzo, similar robust and exhilarating energy heard some years later in Robert Simpson’s own two in his symphonies Four and Five. The outbreak of exuberance worthy of Janácek at the very end confirms this work as an essential post war English symphony worthy to stand alongside similar bedfellows from Arnold, Tippett, Rubbra and Simpson.