Symphony Fantastique Fantastic in Penzance AND Nuits D'Ete

Concert at St Mary’s Church, Penzance  14^th January 2017

West and rural  Cornwall had a humdinger of a musical weekend.  You could not get better concerts in some of the great cities.  First the superb Craig Ogden, the classical guitarist born in Australia, who is now one of the best exponents of his instrument in the UK returned for the fourth time (!)  to Portscatho  to give another  rammed recital for the discriminating Roseland Music Society. Second a Symphony Concert  in St Mary’s Church.Penzance  of the Music of that revolutionary romantic Hector Berlioz which included  his Symphony Fantastique and (one of my favourite concert works for soprano and orchestra) Nuits d’Ete.     This concert clashed with a pianist playing at Truro Three Arts – Cornwall is not short of musical highlights if you have the determination to unveil them.  All would do better to post on Cornwall Music Networks free website to encourage new audience.

I missed the Opening Hungarian Dance, pace the seasonal hazard of a cauliflower cropping tractor/trailer grinding down the single carriageway A30 in the early evening.  The Penzance Esplanade was rammed with cars parked up, and having found a slot I climbed the granite steps up the path, the surf sussurating behind me through the lovely graveyard dimly lit from above  to the bluff on which the beacon soaring windows of St Mary’s stands, and into a well- attended but not full church.

Within, below a high blue painted vaulted ceiling we have a  warm, galleried church with a noble organ at the west end and ranked opposite a 66 piece orchestra  including 10 desks of violins, a magnificent collection of wind, large horn section and brass (or course) Four bassoons.   These considerable forces corralled by Nigel Wicken  represent the cream of mid and west Cornwall talent together with I suspect some straggling brilliant music college students before they return east.

Elinor Coleman was the soprano soloist in Nuits d’Ete, the ravishingly beautiful settings that Berlioz wrote of Theophile Gautier’s bucolic love poetry.  At a time  when he was in love with Harriet Smithson, the Irish soprano.  Ms Coleman has a glorious voice and sang the work with elan and character, her warm tone and beautiful French kept us engaged through the wickedly  seductive orchestral writing.  Wicken allowed himself to be led by a performer who was at one with the orchestra and explored the colour and subtleties of  expression of the text and while a greater breadth of dynamic range might have been preferred had the orchestra allowed her to float, soar enrapturing over the wider palette of sonority.  La Coleman herself was wearing very fetching off-the-shoulder dress not dissimilar in to the one Harriet Smithson wears in the celebrated alluring portrait by Dubufe of 1828 and she has the talent to deserve to.  One felt that Hector would have been equally beguiled.

Berlioz’s own experience of performing his brilliant and epoch making Symphonie Fantastique is described in his highly entertaining autobiography, which are confessional (he was one for the ladies), catty, partial and flamboyant.  A performance had to be curtailed because of disgruntled contract musicians bunking off when not enough stands and desks were provided causing a concert to over-run and thus not account for their overtime!   Sounds familiar.....but not  in this quite frankly wonderful orchestra in Penzance.   We had clarinet, horn and cor anglais playing of distinction –and flute, bassoon, oboe and timpani of exceptional ability and bezazz.   The strings were not shimmering but gave a noble account of the piece.....which is what Hector Berlioz himself rarely got.

All in all a great evening of great music in Penzance.