Newbury Spring Festival’s vibrant young musicians lift the spirits

Newbury Spring Festival: Fantasia Orchestra

at St Lawrence Church, Hungerford

on Thursday, May 22

Review by JULIA ROWNTREE

THE lovely weather enabled the audience at St Lawrence to gather and mingle in the beautiful churchyard which is very much part of the festival scene.

The Fantasia Orchestra is made up of young, freelance players mostly from London. This ensemble consisted of three first violins, two seconds, two violas, two celli, one double bass, two oboes and two horns. This made for an excellent balance.

In Dance of the Furies by Gluck, which opened the programme, the playing was precise, energetic and with clean attack. The crescendi were beautifully controlled, creating a strong tension in the music.

In the familiar Mozart’s Horn Concerto in E flat K495, Zoe Tweed, the young soloist, played with a warm tone. In the first movement the balance of soloist with the accompanying orchestra was well judged by conductor Tom Fetherstonhaugh.

In the second movement, Romanza, Zoe played with wonderfully long and smooth phrases. The final Rondo was full of joy and fun and a lightness of touch – it danced!

For an encore Zoe played the third movement for Alpenhorn by Leopold Mozart, not on the horn, but on a length of garden hose with a funnel at the far end and a horn mouthpiece at the other, demonstrating the basic principles of a brass instrument. The orchestra stood to play which helped immediate communication with the audience, as did a few well-chosen words from the conductor.

The second half consisted of two short symphonies. Joseph Haydn’s Symphony 49 in F minor (La Passione) displayed the whole gamut of the Sturm und Drang movement in music.

The first movement was controlled and hushed, the second contained leaping angular intervals and drama. Fetherstonhaugh set a poised tempo in the Minuet and the Finale was full of vitality with sudden dynamic changes , again clearly directed by the conductor.

The evening was brought to a close with Mozart’s Symphony 29 K201. The decorative ornaments of the first movement were particularly neatly performed. The Andante was played with easy grace. The Minuet was followed by the Finale with excellent contrasts of mood and dynamics and wonderfully neat, very fast descending scalic passages.

The encore was Percy Grainger’s arrangement of the Londonderry Air for strings and two horns.

This was an excellently played, well-chosen programme which lifted the spirits.